Xi & him, if you go to San Francisco...

By Thursday New Delhi and Beijing time, Wednesday San Francisco time, he who is Xi, and he who is no regular Joe, will be meeting at the Apec Summit in 'Frisco. It's been a year since the two faces of the two most powerful countries met face to face. It is doubtful that like Harry Burns and Sally Albright, who met after a gap of five years in the 1989 romcom When Harry Met Sally..., Joe Biden, upon meeting Xi Jinping, will catch up with the same kind of bonhomie old friends bonhomise over. It is equally unlikely that the free-spirited Biden will follow the footsteps of Geet Dhillon in the 2007 romcom Jab We Met, and get Xi to 'let go'. But with the world looking on, the two of them should be lighter than recent interactions between a democracy and a 'people's democratic dictatorship' have allowed.

There is, after all, a third character in this rendezvous - the city of San Francisco. While it isn't any longer what the brochures make it out to be - rampant homelessness and crime having overtaken trams caterpillaring up and down those steep, rolling streets, the Golden Gate fogged up in the distance and Menlo Park a 45-minute drive away - for Xi and him, the spirit can still be hip'n'hippieish. As the iconic song from the Summer of Love goes, 'If you're going to San Francisco/ Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair' (bit.ly/ 3sAnF1p). Peace and love, Xi and Joe.