Australian inhospitality is once again on show to the world. Australia's High Commissioner in Delhi is having to explain an email circulated among high ranking Victorian police officers, which reportedly carries a video of an Indian being electrocuted on a train, with a comment that this would be a way of solving the 'Indian student' problem.
Despite this, Indian hospitality remains steadfast. Indian hospitality is not a cliche. The guest is God in an Indian household. The poorest among India's 1.2 billion will open their hearts and homes to a guest. All it takes is another cup of water into the ever present dhal.
What binds India together is not a sense of national identity but the 64,000 kilometers of railway tracks across the length and breadth of the sub continent. These parallel lines are a source of both connection and disconnection for a large majority of the billion that sweat and smile through the heat and the rain.
It is not unusual for travellers in the dusty and overcrowded trains to share their dry chapattis and pickles with those that have none. This instinctive generosity has its genesis in mythology where God comes in disguise to the richest and the poorest. To give and share is to be rewarded. Maybe not in this life but somewhere in the next.
Medal winners at the Commonwealth Games have been promised free rides on India's fabled Royal trains. The Royal Rajasthan, Golden Chariot and Maharaja Express are just three of these palaces on wheels.
For many of the athletes this is a world only of their dreams. The Commonwealth Games and the opening ceremony gave Indians, rich and poor, an opportunity to be satisfied that there is a reason to celebrate.
The resounding cheers for the Pakistan contingent showed the ties that bind these neighbours, kept apart only by the barbed wire cynicism of politicians protecting their patch.
India beat Pakistan in the hockey. But there was no beating of the chest. All India Radio called it 'a victory for sport and an affirmation of the ties that bind us together'. There was genuine warmth in the embrace of the Pakistani and Indian boxer; one a victor the other vanquished, but bound together by the Himalayas and the plains.
Peter Walsh, commentating on ABC Grandstand,