Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama at the G8 summit at L’Aquila, Italy, in July

Washington, Nov. 2: Children’s Day celebrations may have been largely reduced to a ritual in India 45 years after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s arrival here on Sunday has given a fillip to a pioneering observance of the event in the White House.

As the very first official event in the run up to Singh’s state visit to Washington next week, the US state department yesterday brought together a group of Indian and American children for “a taste of India” at Blair House, the American President’s state guesthouse opposite the White House.

Capricia Penavic Marshall, the state department’s chief of protocol, described yesterday’s event as a “culinary learning experience” for children, which her department plans to institutionalise as a part of American diplomacy under a new initiative called “Diplomatic Partnerships”.

For the India media invited to the event, it was also an opportunity to see “Alladin’s Cave”, the huge walk-in freezer in the basement of Blair House, which is getting filled with paalak, dal in various stages of pre-preparation and other desi ingredients for Singh’s stay in Washington.

Strewn on a table next to “Alladin’s Cave” were bottles of ghee, packets of maida and other Indian food items one would normally not expect to see in the US president’s state guesthouse.

But Ian Knox, the chef at the Blair House for 21 years, was absolutely unfazed. He recalled preparing Indian meals for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his stay as a guest of the US President.

“I am very familiar with Indian food,” he said, but was somewhat puzzled that while Indians had very specific requirements for lunch and dinner, they invariably went for English breakfast.

Knox is stocking up on free range eggs from chicken that are not cooped up, a fine array of delicate butter spreads and good bread, anticipating that Singh and his entourage will not ask for puri bhaaji in the morning during his visit to Washington.

Yesterday, Knox teamed up with Vikram Sunderam, executive chef at Rasika, this city’s best Indian restaurant, to teach the group of Indian and American children Indian cooking and then give them a taste of what they prepared. It was followed briefly by demonstrations of Indian dances.

Many of the black and white children from Myrtilla Minor Elementary School from Washington’s relatively underprivileged north east were seeing Indian ingredients like chilli powder, turmeric and curry leaves for the first time and could not at times rein in their curiosity.

For these children from the US capital city’s north east, some abysmally poor areas of which were until recently no-go for even the police because of rampant crime, the “Taste of India” prompted by Singh’s forthcoming visit was also the opportunity of a lifetime to see Blair House, the historic limestone mansion built in 1824.

The presence of these children, who were given a tour of the Blair House, was also a reminder that with Barack Obama as President, the White House complex was no longer the preserve of the rich and the privileged.

For the Indian children who toured the Blair House too, it was a rare opportunity to see the official state guesthouse of the US President, where several Indian Prime Ministers have stayed during their visits to the White House.

Ironically, some of the Indian children were also unfamiliar with what goes into Indian food prepared in their homes. While tasting Indian cuisine, children were asked questions about the US presidency and India by Marshall, the chief of protocol.

One of the questions was “who stays in Blair House?” Troy Harrison, whose Bengali mother Banashri Bose Harrison, is minister for commerce at the Indian embassy here gave the answer, which even none of the American children knew.

Troy told Marshall that US Presidents-elect stay at the Blair House in the days before their inauguration on the Capitol, from where they shift to the White House for four years.

The 12-year-old was complimented on the answer, which no other child knew.

Everyone was stumped when the answer to one question about Indian apparel was salwar kameez. Marshall wanted to show the children what this ethnic Indian dress looked like.

Luckily, the stalemate was brief. Punya Salila Srivastava, an IAS officer now on sabbatical at the University of Maryland near here, who was wearing a salwar kameez immediately took off her jacket and displayed her ethnic clothes. Her two school-going children, Bhaavya and Suramya, were among those at the Blair House.

Nehru was never mentioned, although the event was taking place only five days after Children’s Day, but the Prime Minister’s visit was very much in focus.

The iron of it would not have been lost on the Indians at the Blair House, especially the ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, that Nehru was not one of the Indian Prime Ministers whom the Americans admired.

The ambassador delighted the children with little anecdotes about India, but also when she demonstrated hand movements in Indian classical dancing, especially fish swimming in water.

She may have been hoping that that the Prime Minister would very much be a fish “in” water and not out of it when he is with US President Barack Obama next week.