Afghan ambassador’s experience with Indian doctor carries fragrance of two nations’ ties: PM Modi

PTI, Jul 1, 2021, 6:34 PM IST

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that the pleasant experience Afghanistan’s ambassador to India Farid Mamundzay had with a doctor here carries the ”fragrance” of the ties between the two countries.

Modi tweeted in response to Mamundzay’s tweet in Hindi expressing gratefulness to Indian people as he recounted his experience with an Indian doctor recently.

He said the doctor refused to take any fee for treating him after coming to know that he was the Afghanistan’s ambassador to India.

”When I asked him the reason he told me that there is very little he can do for Afghanistan. He said he will not charge his brother. I was at a loss of words to express my gratefulness. This is India: Love, respect, values and compassion. Afghans cry a little less due to you, and smile a bit more and feel much better,” he tweeted.

As his tweet, posted on Wednesday, went viral, one Balkaur Singh Dhillon invited him to visit his village Haripura, to which the ambassador asked if he was speaking of a village by this name in Surat in Gujarat.

Dhillon said the Haripura village he mentioned was in Hanumangarh in Rajasthan near the border with Punjab.

It was then that Prime Minister Modi responded, saying he should go to both villages by this name and noting that the one in Gujarat is full of history.

The Gujarat village, it may be noted, had hosted a Congress session in pre-independent India in 1938 in which Subhas Chandra Bose was elected the party’s president.

Modi then added, ”The experience with a doctor of my India that you have shared carries the fragrance of the India-Afghanistan relations.” Thanking Modi, Mamundzay said good friends are like stars which one may not always see but knows that they are around. This is also the story of the relations between the two countries, he added.

”Thanks to the honourable prime minister for giving his time. It is another example of this old and deep ties,” he tweeted, replying to Modi’s post.