[From Pixabay]
Good morning,
In Walking With Lions: Tales From a Diplomatic Past, K. Natwar Singh, a career diplomat who moved to politics and served as India’s foreign minister in 2004 and 2005, narrates a fascinating incident that took place when Dr S Radhakrishnan, the then vice president, met Mao Zedong.
“While Chou En-Lai had a way of entrancing people but being elastic at the same time, Mao Zedong was made of a different metal. No one disagreed with him. He had a powerful mind. He was a poet and a voracious reader. What was unique was his personal will, and that will he made sure was executed. Writer and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Henry Kissinger was mesmerized when he first met Mao.
“When Dr Radhakrishnan called on Mao Zedong, he was received in the courtyard of the chairman’s house. Chou En- Lai was also present. After shaking hands, the vice-president patted Mao on his left cheek. The chairman had never been subjected to such familiarity. He was momentarily taken aback. The vice-president was quick to put Mao at ease by saying, ‘Mr Chairman, don’t be alarmed, I did the same thing to Stalin and the Pope.’ What an exit line!”
While we cannot expect such an exchange to take place between Xi Jinping and anyone from India, the concerns remain the same.
Natwar Singh writes: “The vice-president asked about peaceful coexistence. Mao said he was for it. Dr Radhakrishnan was a bit didactic. The professor in him put aside the political nitty-gritties. To Dr Radhkrishnan’s observation that if India and China stood together the world would take note of it, Mao said that if India and China stood together for twenty years, ‘no one would be able to make us go on different paths’.
“Twenty years were reduced to five, when China attacked India in 1962. But that is another story.”
Have a great day!
The resource crunch
Most of us are trained to think about the future basis what we are witnessing now. Consider natural resources as a case in point. All models have it that if we continue to consume these at the current pace, us humans are doomed. That is why when Jason Crawford, the founder of The Roots of Progress, argued we’re looking at it all wrong, we read it with much interest.
“Predictions of shortages are typically based on ‘proven reserves.’ We are saved from shortage by the unproven and even the unknown reserves, and the new technologies that make them profitable to extract. Or, when certain resources really do run out, we are saved economically by new technologies that use different resources: Haber-Bosch saved us from the guano shortage; kerosene saved the sperm whales from extinction; plastic saved the elephants by replacing ivory.
“In just the same way, it can seem that we’re running out of ideas—that all our technologies and industries are plateauing. Technologies do run a natural S-curve, just like oil fields. But when some breakthrough insight creates an entirely new field, it opens an entire new orchard of low-hanging fruit to pick. Focusing only on established sectors and proven fields thus naturally leads to pessimism. To be an optimist, you have to believe that at least some current wild-eyed speculation will come true.”
Will you let us know what you think after reading all of what he has to say?
Dig deeper
Musical diplomacy
There is a remote (very remote) possibility that you might not have heard the song Pasoori. The New Yorker has a piece on its backstory that’s worth reading. Here’s an extract:
“In early 2021, [Ali] Sethi sent a voice note with the melody and the first few bars of the lyrics he had in mind to the producer Zulfiqar Khan, who goes by Xulfi. Xulfi had just been brought on to helm the fourteenth season of ‘Coke Studio,’ a popular musical TV series in Pakistan produced by the soda company. ‘I had goosebumps. I wanted to dance,’ Xulfi said. ‘I knew that people were going to love it, and that they wouldn’t know what hit them.’”
It did, and Priyanka Mattoo reports that it has spread to the US too.
“Like many popular desi songs, ‘Pasoori’ started spreading with a forward on WhatsApp from family members in India, moving through the Middle East, Europe, and Australia, before finally reaching—all of a few weeks later—the United States. Now it’s poised to cross over, and so is Sethi. When the possibility came up of attending an Oscar party in Los Angeles that was celebrating South Asian nominees, Sethi, who travels frequently, was game.”
Dig deeper
Creativity unleashed
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Warm regards,
Team Founding Fuel
