NEW DELHI, 22 July — If we but knew we were making television history some of us would have come better dressed, and others better prepared.

The invitation to meet President Pervez Musharraf over breakfast at Amar Vilas in Agra on the last day of his visit to India came during the preparations, when goodwill and effort were still the main motivations.

Slots were being filled on both sides. The prime minister of India gave a lunch on the first day, an ice-breaker in the company of assorted celebrities. Later that day was the formal banquet by the president of India, an occasion for speeches in front of a protocol list.

Sunday was marked out as the day of unrest: hard work on the language of agreement, interspersed with an afternoon at the Taj for the guests and neither peace nor serenity before or after. As it happened, the two delegations finally went to bed at four, just a little before dawn on Monday. But they had the satisfaction of having made substantial progress on the critical paragraph on the structure of the dialogue between India and Pakistan on Kashmir.

The controversy over whether India and Pakistan would discuss Kashmir at Agra was artificial. This decision was made by the government of India many weeks before, when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sent his invitation to Musharraf. That brief but well-drafted note had no ambiguity: “We have to pick up the threads again, including renewing the Composite Dialogue, so that we can put in place a stable structure of cooperation and address all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.” Vajpayee signed this invitation but it was made with the complete concurrence of his Home Minister L.K. Advani.

There was no hard line and soft line; there was only one line. Delhi knew that this was a prerequisite for any resumption of a dialogue, and accepted this reality with commendable lack of fuss. Musharraf’s subsequent insistence on Kashmir as some kind of “central” or “main” subject was a public relations exercise designed to calm nerves at home and increase his personal space in domestic politics. (If you learn next year that President Musharraf has become a candidate in a general election for the for the designation he holds now by compulsion, remember you read it here first.) India had agreed to talk about Kashmir, and where the clause appeared in the text was of less consequence than the fact of its presence.

Similarly, the professed concern to fight the common enemy, poverty, together was code for a series of joint initiatives on other issues, from drugs to the economy (with a gas pipeline thrown but not mentioned.)

But harmony in Indo-Pak affairs can never come without a flap. It came over a word: “dispute”. It was not semantics. Pakistan wanted the Kashmir problem to be called a dispute. India rejected “dispute” to avoid any future interpretation that might prejudice our position on the status of Jammu and Kashmir. We offered “issue” as the alternative. Pakistan conceded. We did a little bow ourselves and permitted Kashmir to be described as the “main issue” between the two countries. So far, so good. Indeed, so far so very good. With the Kashmir clause out of the way on Monday morning seemed to promise nothing but optimism.

But there is always a night before to the morning after.

The luxury lepers of the Summit — the media — were isolated in the plush surroundings of the Mughal Sheraton and fed solitary confinement rations (driblets of information) by dignitaries visiting from the elite stretch between Jaypee Palace and Amar Vilas, where the Upper Classes were closeted.

The first serious morsel came a little before sunset on Sunday, when Gen. Rashid Qureshi dropped by to display a large smile. The words did not matter. The beam was positive. From Jaypee Palace a little later, or perhaps simultaneously, arrived Sushma Swaraj, friendly, courteous and concerned about the well-being of seven hundred journalists with nothing to do except exchange gossip and theory. But soon Sushma Swaraj also had a message to convey. The talks had covered a wide range of subjects, making them precisely what we wanted: a “composite” dialogue. Kashmir? Oh, a few things had also been said about Kashmir, to the best of her knowledge.

A nuclear power should not go ballistic, but that is what the Pakistan delegation became. The politics of briefing follow their own logic. Sushma Swaraj was addressing her own constituency, which was as apprehensive about Peacenik Vajpayee as the Pakistan Army was likely to be about Mohajir Musharraf. However television does not choose its audience; an audience chooses its television station.

There were probably as many people watching Doordarshan in Pakistan on Sunday as in India. The reaction was immediate and intense. Gossip swirled through the Mughal Sheraton that there had been phone calls from Islamabad that asked President Musharraf a simple question: what are you doing? He had to answer that question.

He made his unhappiness clear to the prime minister immediately, who in turn transferred a piece of his mind to his minister for some information and lots of broadcasting. Before midnight Pakistan issued a press release that Kashmir had been the talking point of the day, and that nothing else would be resolved if Kashmir was not. Was it entirely accidental that most newspapers had gone to bed and could not be roused from their printing machines by the time this statement was released? Was this deliberate? Was there some agreement between the two delegations that they should try and minimize the perceived damage from the briefs? Perhaps. It is an inference. Fact: Television does not sleep. Hawks declared the summit dead.

The breakfast at Amar Vilas took place at swivel-point, when the summit could turn in whichever direction the principals wanted.

The breakfast was on record. Placed beside the elegant Noritake china at each setting lay a scratchpad and a pencil for notes. A television camera pointed at the president from midpoint between the two wings of the straight-line U formation in which we were seated.

 I thought that, rather sensibly, the Pakistanis were keeping a record, because 18 editors can easily manage 19 different versions of any answer. I was not aware that this repast was being relayed into millions of homes through a Pakistan TV feed that would be picked up by Star, but what of that? The president wanted to be quoted; that was part of his purpose. As a journalist, I wanted a story: that was my reason for being there. My question would not change, whether it was on the record or off it. I would have done a story for my newspaper if the president had not pre-empted all of us with his camera.

President Pervez Musharraf offered us a Barmecide’s Feast. You could eat whichever dish you believed was there. You could leave the room with evidence for whatever was your wish. On Kashmir he took a hard line for Pakistani breakers of the fast, but also indicated that the dispute over dispute had been resolved by a Pakistani concession. He outlined the way he would like to take a Kashmir dialogue forward, through a series of steps instead of placing the answer before the discussion.

Tidbits were dropped, gently or abruptly, between the Eggs and uthappam. The president suggested that the return visit by the prime minister could take place as early as in September, or if not that perhaps by November. It was obvious that behind the fireworks at breakfast lay another face, of a growing level of understanding in the one-to-one meetings. By the time the summit was over the president and the prime minister had spent more time with each other, over substantive issues, than had ever been done by two leaders of India and Pakistan.

The drama of the last day of the summit, the two high points when a nine-point declaration was almost signed, is well-known by now: repetition would be a waste of space. There was agreement at the foreign ministers‚ level on the draft before it was stopped, cold, in its tracks at the proverbial last minute.

Whose nerve surrendered to caution? The aftermath is crowded with questions, and Musharraf has opted to tell his version of the answers through what has become a favorite methodology, a press conference. The point to note is that Musharraf and Vajpayee have spent the days since the summit in risk management, and both have done with some skill, using their personal strengths and public image to their best advantage.

Which of the two is more dangerous to the enemy? A general with a gun, or a general with a microphone?

President-General Musharraf’s infatuation with the media is understandable, given the long years of restraint under the discipline of the Pakistan Army, unable to say his piece when he must have felt like kicking his political masters for dribbling with the truth on matters of the greatest controversy and highest importance. If he was silent and accepting by nature this would have been more bearable.

But clearly he is a natural with media, articulate and unfazed, and protected by the brilliantly effective armor of candor. Some day Musharraf will also discover that media is a difficult mistress, prone to punish the slightest human error without mercy, but that day has not come yet. With such a man we must learn to find out not what he is willing to tell us, candidly, but what he is not willing to tell us.

His press conference in Islamabad was his breakfast meeting on a larger stage; at neither venue has he disclosed the substance of his one-to-one conversations with Vajpayee, particularly during the last meeting on Monday night when the two met for more than an hour-and-a-half to say good-bye. I do not have the magical properties of a fly, and I was not sitting on a Jaypee Palace wall, so I cannot inform our readers about what went on. But when words are unavailable we might want to let facts speak for themselves.

Within some forty-eight hours of “failure”, for instance, an invitation came from Pakistan’s foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, to our foreign minister, Jaswant Singh — and was promptly accepted. That did not have the look and feel of failure. It is evident that Vajpayee and Musharraf have agreed to keep the momentum of the talks alive. It was reiterated that Vajpayee would travel to Pakistan; that invitation and its acceptance stood.

The time between Agra and Islamabad will be used by both sides to find the missing links that prevented an agreement. The pressure cooker atmosphere at a summit, with its inbuilt time limitations, often leads to a Pyrrhic victory. Lahore is an excllent example. If there are solutions then they are best cooked over a slow fire, rather than a two-day conflagration.

It is dangerous to underestimate the virtues of silence. Vajpayee is a high-profile orator but a low-profile individual; his natural style is accommodative rather than aggressive; and he understands that in a democracy too much candor can be injurious to one’s health. Some things are best internalized. The temptation to confuse silence with weakness is a mistake. There must have been those who argued that he should have used the authority of his position and his personal stature in his party to overcome objections and sign the declaration in Agra. Lahore has shown him that a brittle agreement does not last; to last, it must have consensus of all concerned. If that takes time, so be it.

Paradoxically, Vajpayee has been strengthened by his flexibility. Since he did not insist on his own inclinations, he proved to his party that he would not place himself above it. Vajpayee knows if any long-term peace has to be reached with Pakistan then its process must have the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is not worried about parties like Shiv Sena; but he needs the consent of Advani and of the majority of his party. He will get it before his visit to Pakistan; indeed he will not go without it.

The one thing that Vajpayee has ensured, and this is critical, is that the dialogue continues. His step-by-step risk management obeyed the democratic process: ministers, allies and all political parties over three days. He will speak to the nation through parliament. But the one message that came through clearly was that baat cheet to chalni chahiye (the talks should go on). There was no serious objection. The process continues.

The key to the India-Pakistan relationship lies in another paradox: success will only come when there is no victory. But it takes time to appreciate and achieve that.