Ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who have simply given up and are now living as goblins under a railway bridge, prepare your livers. Donald Trump, the man whose hair has its own postcode, has promised to visit India. This, they say, is a thaw in the famously frigid Modi-Trump relations. A thaw. As if two men who once hugged like wrestlers before a pay-per-view main event had suddenly remembered they own adjoining fallout shelters.
Let us examine this 'thaw'. The word implies ice. The last time I checked, the only ice between these two was the ice in their veins. Trump and Modi: a duo whose diplomatic style makes oil tankers look like speedboats. And now, with a UK trade corridor under negotiation, the whole circus is wheeling back into town. The British, ever the diplomats, have decided that the best way to secure a post-Brexit trade deal is to let two men who think tariffs are a type of sushi shake hands over a map of the subcontinent.
But what of this 'thaw'? The term suggests a gradual warming. In reality, it's more like a supernova: sudden, blinding, and likely to leave a crater. Trump's visit is not a rapprochement; it's a publicity stunt. He needs a distraction from the various legal proceedings that are clustering around him like vultures at a car crash site. And what better distraction than a photo op with the world's most populous democracy? The optics are good: Trump, the dealmaker, striding through New Delhi's smog, shaking hands with a man who once wore a jacket made of himself.
And then there's the UK trade corridor. This is not a thing: it's a phantom limb. The British, post-Brexit, are desperate for any deal that suggests they are not a lonely island of marmalade and regret. The corridor is meant to link Britain, India, and the US in a beautiful triangle of commerce. In practice, it will be a triangle of confusion: a road map to nowhere, drawn in crayon by lobbyists who have never seen an actual map. The corridor will straddle the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the English Channel, but utterly fail to mention the potholes, the bureaucracy, or the fact that India's customs officials are the only people on earth who can make a TPS report look simple.
But I digress. The main event is Trump's visit. He will land, no doubt, in a plane that says 'TRUMP' in gold letters so large that they can be seen from the International Space Station. He will be greeted by Modi, who will perform his signature hug: a full-body clamp that looks like a yoga pose gone horribly wrong. They will smile, they will wave, and they will sign a piece of paper that says 'Memorandum of Understanding' in a font that suggests both parties drank heavily before the meeting.
And the rest of us? We will sit in our pubs and our living rooms, watching this mime show on our televisions. We will drink gin, the only honest lubricant in a world of lies. We will smile at the absurdity: two men, one with a comb-over that defies the laws of physics, the other with a moustache that has its own intelligence dossier, pretending that they are building a better world.
They are not. They are building a better photo opportunity. And that, dear reader, is the only thaw that matters.
