india

Updated: Jun 06, 2014 07:35 IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday thanked his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif for gifting his mother a "wonderful" white sari.

"Nawaz Sharif ji has sent a wonderful white Sari for my Mother. I am really grateful to him & will send it to my Mother very soon," Modi tweeted.



Pictures on ANI's Twitter page later showed Modi's mother, Hiraben, holding the green box in which the sari had been sent.

PM Narendra Modi's mother opens the box of saree gifted by Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif pic.twitter.com/oKifRA7MjX — ANI (@ANI_news) June 5, 2014

Sharif had attended the swearing-in of Narendra Modi, becoming the first Pakistan prime minister to attend the inaugural of an Indian prime minister.





Nawaz Sharif ji has sent a wonderful white Sari for my Mother. I am really grateful to him & will send it to my Mother very soon. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 5, 2014

This is not the first time Modi has spoken about Sharif on his Twitter handle.

Immediately after being sworn-in on May 26, Modi took to Twitter to announce his informal conversation with Sharif. As per the tweets at that time, the two had "emotional" conversations.



Sharif, Modi tweeted, was touched by visuals of his mother offering him sweets.

"The visuals touched both Nawaz Sharifji and his mother. He (Sharif) told me after seeing the visuals, his mother got very emotional," Modi tweeted.

Sharif, according to Modi's tweets, visits his mother once a week. Modi had sent a shawl for Sharif's mother after which his daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif tweeted, "Thank u (you) v (very) much PM @narendramodi for the beautiful shawl for my grandmother. My father personally delivered it to her (sic)."

Twitter users welcomed the "sari" diplomacy between the nuclear-armed arch-rivals, who have fought three wars since independence, but one user joked that Sharif had perhaps misheard Modi.

"Oh, I thought we had asked him for a sorry," wrote Ramesh Srivats, a marketing professional.



Bilateral ties broke down after attacks by Pakistani gunmen on India's commercial hub Mumbai in 2008, in which 166 people were killed.

(With AFP inputs)