Barack, Michelle Obama dance with Mumbai school children
Mumbai: US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama danced with the kids of Holy Name School, Colaba, here today to celebrate Diwali with them. The Obamas, who lit a lamp to mark the occasion, were greeted by the students here
in their traditional Indian attire. The school kids later performed the 'Koli' dance in
honour of the Obamas'. Both President Obama and Michelle Obama joined the kids
for a foot-tapping Marathi folk number. The school kids appeared all excited and
geared up to celebrate the moment as the Obamas posed for a number of
photographs with the children and gave autographs. President Obama was later to
address the students of St Xavier's College at Town Hall here, where he was to have
a date with India's Generation Next. After a tight schedule in Mumbai, President
Obama will leave for a two-day stopover to New Delhi this afternoon. Obama, who
reaches the capital on Sunday afternoon from Mumbai, will have a busy schedule --
visiting the Humayun's Tomb and Rajghat, meeting Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh and addressing the Parliament before he leaves on Tuesday. The Prime
Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, will receive President
Obama when he lands here on Sunday afternoon. Dr. Singh personally took the
decision to go to the tarmac at the Air Force Station Palam, next to the Indira Gandhi
International Airport to receive the Obamas', who will arrive on Air Force One at
3.35 p.m. This will be the third time that Dr. Singh will break away from protocol of
not receiving dignitaries at the airport. He has departed from this on two previous
occasions - In March 2006, when he went to receive then US president George W.
Bush and before that, when he went to receive Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdullah
Aziz. The decision, according to one local daily, is an indication of how important the
Indian leadership is seeing this visit by an American president. During President
Obama's tenure in the White House (since January 2009), India's relationship with
the United States has grown in various sectors, and has been described by Obama
as a defining partnership of the 21st century. Obama is the fifth American president
to visit India, the others being D.D. Eisenhower (1959), Richard Nixon (1969),
Jimmy Carter (1978), Bill Clinton (2000) and George W. Bush (2006).
