The purported remark, wildly misconstrued, misinterpreted, and misreported by some hyperventilating journalists, briefly threatened to overshadow an already tenuous engagement. However, the characters involved in the drama quickly put a lid on it.
It all began when Pakistani television anchor Hamid Mir reported an informal conversation between Sharif and journalists over tea where the Pakistani PM expressed his unhappiness over India taking its grievances against his country to the US, and at Pakistan becoming a major part of the conversation between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President Barack Obama.
He reportedly related a joke or a fable of a whiny village woman whose antics disrupted direct communication.
That conversation, never on record in the first place, was loosely reported at first in the Pakistani media as Sharif calling Manmohan Singh a " dehati aurat" (village woman). In an age of 24/7 news cycle, it quickly became grist for political oneupmanship in India.
Incidentally, the Hamid Mir, the TV anchor involved in the episode, later clarified that the Sharif had never said anything derogatory about the Indian prime minister, but insisted he did share a joke about Singh with journalists.
On the record though, Sharif told an Indian news channel that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a "good man" and he looked forward to meeting him.
According to some Pakistani journalists, there is a background to this flap. Apparently, Hamid Mir was promised an interview with Manmohan Singh in return for Sharif's interview with an Indian channel - a "deal" which Indian officials scoffed at.
Pique at being denied the interview after travelling all the way to New York could have caused the reporting mishap, according to one account.
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