Vajpayee was Pramod’s mentor. As a young activist, Pramod had delivered a speech from the same dais and Atalji saw promise in the young man. That was during the 1977 election campaign, soon after Pramod had come out of jail. Imprisonment during Emergency then was like a political halo.

Vajpayee and Advani, in their fifties then, became cabinet ministers in the Janata government. Thanks to Jayaprakash Narain, the Parivar had acquired legitimacy. Though the Janata experiment collapsed, opposition parties had tasted blood. The Bharatiya Janata Party began its march to power slowly but surely. Neither did the marginalisation in 1980 elections nor the1984 elections, when its strength was reduced to just two in Lok Sabha, demoralised it.

It was during those dog years that Pramod began to develop a relationship with the press. Himself a student of journalism once and a sub-editor in the Sangh mouthpiece, Tarun Bharat, Pramod knew the ropes. There was no 24x7 TV news those days and nobody even discussed the possibility of private channels. We in the print media were the only option for political parties and leaders. Like many other journalists, I met Pramod at that time. We all were impressed by his energy and ability to argue a difficult ideological position. Nobody then really thought the BJP would be in power at the Centre. Not only the Congress but the so-called non-Congress secular parties were also hostile to it. Who would form an alliance with the BJP? But Pramod would argue that the BJP is a party of the future. Pramod’s friends in the press used to be condescending in their conversation with him. Rajiv Gandhi appeared almost invincible in the mid-eighties and so did the Congress.

... contd.