"You need to be at the White House gates at 7 am," Gautam Bambawale, one of the Indian Foreign Service's young stars, told us as soon as we arrived at the Wardman Mariott Park hotel on Sunday evening, "even though the ceremony only begins at 9."

As the traveling Indian media, reeling from jet lag, sighed in unison, Gautam, who had been assigned the difficult brief of negotiating access with the White House, told the story of how the German media delegation, accompanying Chancellor Schroder on his visit recently, were denied access to the White House, because they were late.

None of us wanted to watch history being made on television. We wanted to see it ringside. That's why we had traveled 10,000 miles (many on AI 001, as the prime minister's guests, yours truly included J). So we didn't get much sleep last night. I, for one, woke up half a dozen times before getting up at 4.15.

By 6.30 we were ready to roll.

And let me put it on record that we were on our best behaviour all through in the greater cause of transformed Indo-US ties, despite provocations like:

· When some members of the White House media corps rudely asked us -- even senior journalists were not spared -- to vacate the chairs they were sitting on because "it is ours."

· We weren't even given water to drink (Washington is hotter these days than Delhi) through all the time we spent either in the sun outside the press briefing room, or when the Americans finally decided to let us have the hot as hell room. Had the situation been reversed and the Americans asked to wait in India, several colleagues noted, we would have done everything to make the Yanks very comfortable, plying them with Coke and Pepsi, in air-conditioned rooms. Some of us have since informally petitioned the ministry of external affairs that we be permitted to extract our revenge when the American media contingent accompanies President Bush to India. :-)

Also See: The Manmohan Visit: History Beckons