‘Biden conveyed subtle message?’ Jairam Ramesh on US President’s gift to PM

NEW DELHI: Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Saturday that whether US President Joe Biden was conveying "some subtle message" by gifting Prime Minister Narendra Modi a book of poems by Robert Frost?

In a tweet, Ramesh said, "President Biden has presented our Prime Minister with a book of poems of Robert Frost. Was he conveying some subtle message? These four lines from Frost's 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening' had been copied out by (Jawaharlal) Nehru and kept on his table: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

"Nehru's masterly biographer S. Gopal had drawn attention to this in 1984 in Vol 3 of his trilogy on Nehru. These lines had been translated into Hindi too by Harivansh Rai Bachchan," he said.

Nehru's close associates say that in his last moments, lines from Robert Frost's poem lay on his pillow side. Prime Minister Modi during his state visit to the US presented special gifts to President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Wednesday.

Among the many gifts, Prime Minister Modi presented President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden a book titled 'The Ten Principal Upanishads', co-authored and published by William Butler Yeats. He also gifted a 7.5 carat lab grown diamond to First Lady Jill Biden, which reflects earth-mined diamonds' chemical and optical properties.

According to the White House, the first couple also gifted a vintage American camera, accompanied by an archival facsimile print of George Eastman's Patent of the first Kodak camera, a hardcover book on American wildlife photography, and a signed, first edition copy of 'Collected Poems of Robert Frost'.

Robert Frost is the only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry during his lifetime. He died at the age of 88 on January 29, 1963. IANS

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