Jaswant's donkey carries the day

new delhi: now this will be cited as precedent. external affairs minister jaswant singh called a donkey a gadha in the rajya sabha. and the chair said there was nothing unparliamentary about it. singh was participating on friday in a debate on the vajpayee-musharraf summit, and was making a serious point when he began narrating a story from aesops. the one about a man, his son and their donkey.when singh mentioned the gadha - he was speaking in hindi - congress mp suresh pachauri wondered whether he should be allowed to use the term. gadha is traditionally expunged by the chair whenever it figures in proceedings of indian legislatures. to be fair, the expression has been usually hurled in anger, or ridicule. instinctively, deputy chairperson najma heptulla knew this was not one of the usual you-are-a-gadha situation. overruling pachauri, who probably wasn't that serious himself in the first place, she said, "gadhe ko hee gadha kaha jaa raha hai (only a donkey is being called a donkey)," she said. this is how the tale goes. a man and his son are walking along with their donkey. passersby find that funny and remind them that a donkey is for riding. so he asks the son to hop on. but passersby further ahead chide the boy for making his father walk. the man then orders his son down, and he rides. now they jeer at him of making the little boy walk. so they both climb on to the donkey, and are accused of trying to kill the poor animal with their weight. left with no other option, the man and the boy decide to carry the donkey on their shoulders. singh was trying to make the point that he or his ministry would have come under criticism mo matter what they did - or did not do - at the agra summit. it was the nature of his job, he reminded the opposition as he finished the story. "ab kya karein, yeh naukari hi aisee hai," he said. apart from the donkey's story, there was hardly anything in singh's speech on agra which hadn't been said before. he had made a similar speech, replying to a similar debate in the lok sabha last week. it is nearly a month since the summit ended. jaswant singh conceded that much while beginning his speech. prime minister atal bihari vajpayee will reply to the debate on monday. he has already done so in the lok sabha. and his independence day speech, too, might have an agra reference. he went through the chronology of the summit, which failed to produce a joint document, implying as before that pakistan president's naivete was in part responsible. he called it the general's "military simplicism". though the general himself prefers to call the quality military "directness". the minister also revealed that he was not too fond of mobile phones. "i do have one," he admitted, adding "i only use it to call, never to receive calls." this, he suggested, was the reason why information minister sushma swaraj was not being kept informed "ever 15 minutes" about the progress of the summit. but she did not speak out of turn when she faced the cameras and made a statement, which seemed to have angered the pakistanis, he made clear. he recounted how the pakistani delayed beginning work with the indian officials on a joint statement. singh referred to pakistan foreign minister abdul sattar as his "senior" counterpart. after they came up with one draft, which singh didn't like in any case but said he would show it to his colleagues, sattar commented the two of them would get flak from both sides. "humko dono taraf is gaalian padengee," he had said.