Relating with colleagues as members of the family is also part of Advani’s RSS grooming. He admits to falling for people with relative ease. “There are occasions when I thought may be I could have handled this person differently. People who I have been most soft to have often been the harshest towards me” He refused to give examples, but one can think of many. “But everyone has positives and negatives. I have to trust people for the positives that they have,” he says. Sangh has always made individuals subordinate to the cause of the organisation, but Advani admits this has changed. “The emphasis on leadership is a result of mass media revolution. Communicating the ideology to large numbers become easy when you project an individual who has been perceived by the people as an embodiment of that ideology.”

Advani himself is the chosen one. He is as active as ever and doesn’t tire easily. Recently he had to attend a party programme in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. He left Delhi at 6 am, landing in Chennai at 9.30 am. He took another flight to Tirunelveli and went straight to the state council meeting. He then posed for nearly 200 photographs with workers before addressing a public meeting that ended at 8.30 pm.

He drove 160 km and reached Madurai by 2 am, and was ready for a darshan at the Meenakshi temple by 6 am. It was then back to Chennai and Delhi by night. Next morning, he was back at Delhi airport at 6.15 am to fly to Bhopal. “Frugal eating,” he offers the only heath tip. Press further, he says: “A morning walk in the backyard.”