The Bush meal was held in the picturesque Mughal gardens with the constellations witness to history in the making; the Hu dinner was organised in the more prosaic setting of the Banquet hall at Rashtrapati Bhavan under the collective gaze of India's ten past Presidents.

More establishment personalities -- the ministers for external affairs, home, defence, petroleum, sports plus the ministers of state for external affairs and science were present -- than business figures dominated the guest list on Tuesday unlike the Bush event where the venue permitted more people, and hence more trade titans.

Scooter sultan Rahul Bajaj, R Seshasayee, chairman, Ashok Leyland, and vice-president, Confederation of India Industry, and Tarun Das, chief mentor, CII were the only businesswallahs we spotted.

Marxist mandarins Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri were there, smart and spiffy in their bandh gallas. The only guests who stayed true to sartorial form were Raksha Mantri A K Antony in a white shirt and mundu, Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar in a kurta-pajama and CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan whose jacket over a checked shirt was a nod to the slight Delhi chill rather than the dress code demanded at such events.

The slim Chinese side included Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, clearly, as we have told you before, a man to watch. Bo spent the half hour at the Ashoka Hall leading up to the presentation ceremony -- where each guest is introduced to the two Presidents -- dictating a speech on his dictaphone, not wasting a moment, typical of China's dynamic leadership.

*Swagatam composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar, the opening tune played at the dinner.

Image: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur greet Hu Jintao.