I had the good fortune to be invited by my local senator to attend Prime Minister Modi's address to the joint session of the United States Congress. This is only the fifth time that an Indian leader has been invited to do such an address, so it has great historical significance. Given that many of you would have read about Modi's speech, or even seen it, let me share things that you may not have seen on TV.

Every senator and congressman in the US gets one ticket that they can give someone in their state/constituency they represent to attend such an important event. Needless to say, every one of those tickets was lobbied for by Indian Americans like myself. So the first thing I noticed when I entered the chamber was that it was a gathering of around 500 very successful Indians gathered to witness this event. I thought I saw a couple of billionaires as they hobnobbed between themselves.

Many of the Indian guests came decked out to show their affinity to India. There were some men who wore tricolor ties, many had Indian and US pins on their suits, and a few also wore a traditional Indian dress. The women were decked out in jewelry as well as beautiful dresses-all of which created some havoc during security screening. There were perhaps 2-3 lucky Indian American kids who had flown in just for the event. Naturally, the other kids there were the Spelling Bee kids that were also shown on TV.

The chamber itself is actually quite small so you get to see all of these famous people quite clearly. I recognized possibly a dozen or so senators and Congressmen as well as cabinet members and naturally Vice President Biden and Speaker Paul Ryan. I was disappointed that President Obama did not attend, which I assume is protocol for this event. Besides Modi's speech, the highlight of the event is just seeing the process of various people entering the chamber. One does not realize on TV but there are 4-5 people seated at the base of the podium. These are not any famous dignitaries so I was not quite sure what their role in these ceremonious events is.

The media is treated as an important group of attendees and their placement seems to be done very carefully. The folks who are photographers are given a prime spot directly opposite the podium but in the visitors' gallery at the top. So the first row in front of me were around 6-8 photographers, of which, around 2-3 seemed to be from the Indian media. The journalists/writers were also at the visitors' gallery level but right behind the podium. So they can hear the proceedings but would not be able to see the actual delivery of the speech.