It is one hell of a jobThis is the story of Hillary Clinton before she became the US Secretary of State. Being the First Lady, she spent eight years in the White House and visited seventy-eight nations of the world. A reading of what she saw and felt about different peoples and countries can help us in understanding her worldview.Of all the countries, India has been her first love because it has been the home of Mohandas Gandhi, whom she reveres as ‘Mahatma’ because his philosophy of non-violent resistance not only served as an inspiration to her but had also greatly influenced Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement against racial segregation in the US. Across the border in Pakistan, there was ‘a world of unfathomable contrasts.’ She found one immediate example in the lives of premier Benazir Bhutto and the purdah observing Mrs Nasreen Leghari, the wife of the then President of Pakistan, Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari. When she enquired from the latter about the role and status of women, she gathered that it depended upon the approval of the male members of the family; however, when, the next day, she met accomplished women academics, bankers, singers, etc, the bewildered Hillary felt as if she had been “rocketed forward several centuries in time.” She remembers Benazir as “a brilliant and striking woman,” and the only celebrity for whom she ever stood behind a rope line to have a glimpse of, while visiting London on a holiday with her daughter, Chelsea.She draws yet another contrast of the changed times in Pakistan at the time of her visit with that of Jackie Kennedy’s in 1962. While Jackie could cause international sensation by wearing sleeveless shifts, knee-length skirts and a midriff-baring sari, Hillary had to be more careful in view of the growing conservatism and decided to dress just like Benazir Bhutto. In addition, she had to keep in mind the State Department tips that warned against crossing legs, pointing fingers, eating with ‘unclean’ left hand or initiating physical contact with the opposite sex, including a handshake.Equally interesting are her observations on the Palestine-Israel conflict. She thinks that the US is the only country that can actually push both antagonists to accept a compromise. She reveals that in spite of the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000; due to her husband’s incessant efforts a peace proposal was matured in January 2001 which was accepted by the Israeli leader Ehud Barak but rejected by Yasir Arafat, and thus, puts the blame of the subsequent tragic events in the area squarely on the person of the Palestinian leader. How much time and effort are consumed in making two opponents just to shake hands publicly can be imagined from the little story behind the handshake of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat at the White House, in September 1993. First, it took a lot of persuasion from the US President Bill Clinton to convince Rabin to shake hand with Arafat. Rabin reluctantly agreed on the condition that there would be no subsequent kissing in the Arab custom. As Clinton could not explain all this to Arafat for fear of offending him so “Bill and Yitzhak engaged in a hilarious rehearsal of the handshake, with Bill pretending to be Arafat as they practiced a complicated manoeuvre that would prevent the Palestinian leader from drawing too close.” This small incident reflects the degree of mistrust and hatred the Israeli leader felt for his Palestinian counterpart.Although she doesn’t put it this way, the leaders of Israel and Palestine will have to learn a lesson from the life of the great South African leader Nelson Mandela if they wish to end bitterness and enmity in the lives of their respective nations. After going through pain and suffering for twenty-seven years in the South African prisons, Mandela concluded that gratitude and forgiveness are the two greatest virtues in life, as he told Hillary that “as I walked out the door towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” If Mandela’s South Africa can overcome its bitterness, why can’t Hillary’s America shake hands with its tiny but self-respecting neighbour Cuba? The then Cuban President Fidel Castro desired to meet the American First Lady at the presidential inauguration of Mandela but she was instructed in unambiguous terms by the State Department not to meet him under any circumstances. She was told, “You can’t shake hands with him. You can’t talk to him.” So, a good part of her time was spent in avoiding him. As she confides in her autobiography: “I’d suddenly spot Castro moving towards me, and I had to hightail it to a far corner of the room. It was ridiculous…”But then, she had to bear many other awkward moments on her foreign ventures. One instance was her conversation with Mrs Mugabe during which the President of Zimbabwe giggled continuously and inappropriately. The other was in Mongolia where she had to drink a bowl of fermented mare’s milk, after which she was advised by the accompanying White House physician to take a course of strong antibiotics to prevent a horrible livestock disease. Yet another was her dinner with the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin in which, first, during the meal, with a mischievous gleam in his eyes, he said to her, ‘’Heel-lary! I will miss seeing you. I have a picture of you in my office, I look at it every day,’’ and later, as a special treat offered her the soup of moose lips, which she avoided somehow or the other because she felt that she had “tasted a lot of unusual food for my country, but I drew the line at moose lips.’’Such can be the challenges behind all the fanfare and smiles of a First Lady; the toughness of which can only be felt by the one who actually goes through them. That is why her staff often teased her that the State Department had a standing directive: if the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor - send Hillary. Who could say that all this would lead to an even bigger test in her life? What challenges she has already, and will experience in future as the secretary of state definitely deserve another book from her. The writer is an academic and journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]