There are two ways of saying it.

What do you think we are giving it away for free?

What do you think, we are giving it away for free.

The first is an offering. The second asks are you nuts. Much the same way Indian Prime Minister Modi addressed a crowd in New York and took a big bite of the Big Apple.

The UN General Assembly is one of the most difficult places to give a speech. The atmosphere is dull and dreary, the podium is small and apologetic, there is scarcely anyone in the vast cavern and no one is really listening. You ignite little passion and are often one of a line of speakers on the schedule. Ergo, you are not likely to set the Hudson on fire. The desultory attitude was best reflected in the monotonous and amateur introduction of the Indian premier. It is done with more passion at a primary school debate.

And the chasm between the reality and the frenzy of the Indian media was a canyon. Why have they been getting so orgasmic about very little.

Modi came, Modi spoke well enough and so he should, we have heard him often enough to know he can hold his own but let’s stop marveling over it. He should be able to speak well so why all this astonishment that he does.

It was a typical UN speech, short on rhetoric, long on intent and did make one point; it put the UN on guard that if India did not get on to the Security Council do not expect New Delhi to be an enthusiastic supporter of every UN initiative.

Indian analysts are so imbued by the Indo-Pak equation which, frankly, was a damp squib and did nothing for the impasse of six decades either from the Nawaz Sharif waffle or the easygoing scarcely intimidating response from Modi that everything else became secondary.

We are hearing so much of Modi on the mike that it is becoming a bit predictable. Unless he begins to get into specifics the allure will fade. There was a fun part. All those TV gurus sitting perched on fragile little stools in a New York wind analyzing every word without really knowing why.

I am a bit in the dark still about all the brouhaha attached to this visit and all the “bated” breath with which everyone was waiting.

I think the gifts he carried had a lot of generosity especially the OK to Americans who can now arrive on a “at the airport” visa but there seems a bit of an imbalance there. In return the Americans aren’t even offering a mild concession to their draconian procedures, often hugely humiliating and spread over days, much like Spanish Inquisition of old. I once wrote an article and this seems like a good place to repeat the sentiments in brief.

It must be wonderful to sit behind a counter and accept and reject applications made to your country by people who want to go there and you don’t particularly want them to come.

One seething mass of hopefuls and penned into dank and clinical waiting rooms, your papers clasped in your sweaty little hands as you paste ingratiating little smiles on your face and try to catch the counter official’s eye. But you are just a number waiting to be called. The self-disgust rises like dust and you don’t like your cowardice because you have just dressed it up as expediency.

The questions are like shrapnel.

Why do you want to go to our country?

Do you have a bank statement?

Are your nails clean?

Oh, you want to visit your son in college, which college, how long has he been studying there, do you have proof of it, show me...yes sir, yes sir, certainly, sir.

You take the acid of insult. But you have to go. And they don’t want you to come. So you are just a number waiting to be called. By the same token, I am also a little baffled by the reference to the Madison Square Garden throng of 18,000 as “Indian citizens.” They are not Indians. They’re Americans of Indian origin.

They took the pledge of allegiance unlike NRIs who still hold Indian passports and are liable for taxes and didn’t wave fare thee well to the tricolor. I have no problem in recreating Marshall McLuhan’s village and dissolving borders and stuff so far as it is mutual. Otherwise, what is the point of currying so much favor? I may be horribly wrong but could Modi have gone a bridge too far in his largesse. Today America, tomorrow the world...and the world still making Gunga Din wait in the big, airless dorm clutching those documents.