By all accounts, it was a meal fit for the kings. Beginning with the traditional chakkara (sweet) Pongal, with a good deal of Chettinad fare thrown in and ending with exotic fruits, the “extraordinary” feast must have been a gastronomic delight even for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, replete with an electoral victory.

And, considering that it was the charming AIADMK Amma, dressed in a majenta silk saree, who was playing host in her elegant Poes Garden bungalow, even Modi couldn’t have asked for more. But the aperitif surely was the small talk about blossoming AIADMK-BJP alliance which whipped up appetite for the 45-course princely meal, specially prepared at Taj Coromandel.

“It was an extraordinary lunch. Jayalalithaa was a very generous host. We thank her from the bottom of our heart,” said BJP spokesperson RaviShankar Prasad, who accompanied Modi. Mobbed by mediapersons when he emerged from Jayalalithaa’s residence after the two-hour sumptuous lunch, Prasad stepped out to take questions, while Modi preferred to remain inside the car.

“We discussed a whole range of issues,” he said, adding that the AIADMK supremo had been “kind enough to appreciate the thumping victory” of Modi and congratulate him. But significant was Prasad’s remarks later that the lunch had “set the right ambience” for an alliance between the AIADMK and the BJP.

“There is a meeting of mind, of thoughts and a commonality on a whole range of issue from terrorism to Ram Setu and the LTTE,” he said. But what kind of alliance could be arrived between the two parties was something that had to be discussed by Jayalalithaa and the BJP’s national leaders, he said.

... contd.