On Aug 15, Independence Day, while Manmohan Singh looked pale, weak and quite out of place at the Red Fort, Modi looked like an ad for vitality capsules as he stood in his designer kurta at the Lalan College in Bhuj. It was a wondrous show. A split TV screen had two prime ministers: Manmohan Singh and the presumptive prime minister.
That was in August. Modi has since been offering performances at the rate of two every day without a break for the past nine months. In the old days even a circus never stayed in town for more than a month. To expect a nation to be riveted on a one-man show for months without a break, belied scant understanding of the Indians' sense of fun. This is a country of fairs, nautankis (village theatre), folk songs, chutkulas (jokes), kahavats (sayings). It is unbelievable that a year long campaign yielded not a joke, a quip, a pun. Viewers had a surfeit of an aggressive, taunting, vicious, menacing Modi. There was no humour, no gentle touch. This, in a nation of the pastoral lyric. If the nation is not all cock-a-hoop with Modi, something must have palled.
Yes, we love our Gods and Goddesses, but not in our living spaces, mornings, noons and evenings. That would be tiresome. Modi was in our living rooms all the time for a full year. The blame will have to be placed somewhere here if the world's most expensive election campaign does not deliver him the prime ministership.
What was conceived by TV script writers as a Modi versus Rahul Gandhi serial dialogue lost considerable audience appeal when Rahul Gandhi refused to come on stage. Even until December, when Arnab Goswami trapped Rahul Gandhi for his solitary interview, there was hope that he would be persuaded to duel Modi. Arnab asked him 18 times in the course of the interview to agree to a debate with Modi. But Rahul Gandhi was fixated on one theme: he was devoting himself to a system of primaries for selection of candidates. This reporter had written years ago that Rahul Gandhi's eyes were set not on 2014 but more on 2024 when he would be only 53 years old and possibly more willing.
