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The Rediff Special/ Anvar Alikhan

Me 'n' Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton and I are old friends. Or rather he's a friend of a friend of mine. Or rather he was in college with somebody I once met at dinner.

His name was David Allen and he turned out to have been at Oxford with Clinton in the late '60s. "What was Clinton like back then?" I asked him, when I met him at dinner a couple of years ago

"He was extremely bright," David replied, "After all, he was a Rhodes Scholar. He was also extremely ambitious, extremely articulate, extremely charming. It was a formidable combination. I think all of us who knew him back then realised that he would go far in life. I thought he would end up as a top lawyer, or as attorney general, or something. But I don't think any of us realised that he would go quite as far as he did.

"In fact," continued David, "Bill's room-mate at Oxford was Strobe Talbott, and we all thought that Strobe would go even further in life than Bill. But Strobe today, of course, is just a flunkey in the State Department while Bill's in the White House." David then proceeded to somewhat reluctantly answer my interrogations on Clinton's Oxford sex life (which, fortunately or unfortunately, is beyond the purview of this article)

So that -- albeit second-hand -- encounter has been the extent of my relationship with Clinton so far. For the past one week I've been trying to deepen that relationship; I've been trying to wangle a pass to attend his speech at Hyderabad's Hi-Tec City this afternoon.

I contacted someone big at the Andhra Pradesh secretariat. He told me to contact someone at the Confederation of Indian Industry. He, in turn, told me to contact someone big at the Secretariat. Ultimately, I was promised a press pass, which should have got to me last night… except that it didn't. "Frankly, the only way you're going to get anywhere near Clinton," said a well-connected friend of mine, "is to go to the Mahaveer Hospital, which he is visiting this morning, and pose as a TB patient."

So, I'm afraid my relationship with Bill Clinton is not going to get any deeper on this particular trip. But at least his motorcade passed this morning right in front of my house. And, my God, I have never ever seen security like this.

Since early this morning the entire area has had an eerie, curfew-like quality -- silent and deserted, but crawling with some of the 55,000 (yes, 55,000) policemen who have apparently been deployed in the city for the few brief hours of Clinton's visit. And this state of curfew is going to remain down my road for the next 3 hours. I'm a prisoner in my own house. I can't go out. I can't even open my gate. But then, let us not forget, this is the city where, less than a month ago, the former home minister was blown to bits by Naxalites. Can you imagine the consequences of a little 'Texas Book Depository' incident in Banjara Hills?

A police friend of mine was telling me about the incredible security arrangements for Clinton: all the way from a cordon of Secret Service "bullet-takers" around him (whose job obviously is to personally "take" any bullets meant for him) to two special spy satellites positioned in the skies above India, so sensitive that they could pick up not just any would-be assassin, but even the dial of his watch.

A short while ago, finally, the motorcade finally passed by my house. First, an Advance Pilot Car, filled with sinister looking American "Men In Black" types. Then, a Pilot Car, filled with more "Men in Black". Then, the motorcade itself, with its three black stretch limos, various assorted cars, jeeps and ambulances … and, most interestingly, three very sinister, windowless, black, high-domed vans filled with who-knows-what weird electronic gadgetry, who-knows-what unseen SWAT teams

For one mad, wonderful moment I was tempted to suddenly run out in front of the motorcade, brandishing a toy gun… just to see what would happen, what superbly rehearsed security drill would be played out by the SWAT teams hidden inside those window-less black vans, but -- er, well -- I guess I had second thoughts.

As I said earlier, I would have liked very much to deepen my relationship with Bill Clinton. But, oh well, I shall have to wait for another, less dramatic, opportunity.

CLINTON VISITS INDIA:The complete coverage

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