Hindutva's “Hriday Samrat” couldn’t have found a campaign venue more after his own hriday than this. Better than any in home state Gujarat, where he only had to take on the boring ‘minority-appeasing’ Congress, as, in Coimbatore, he could tear into the Left too. The CPI(M)’s P R Natarjan and Congressman P R Prabhu consider each other the main rival here, even as the variable distance between their leaders in New Delhi is turning out to be the mother of all uncertainties this poll season. Sheer glee for Narendra Modi.

Donning a 1000-lotus garland, Modi blesses everyone of the BJP’s feet-touching candidates from the neighbourhood. The party’s local contender for the Lok Sabha G K S Selvakumar himself gets no more than this gestural support. In an hour-long speech, Modi’s vocal support goes all out to the party’s biggest Coimbatore man, Advaniji who was “reborn right here”. “He escaped the serial blast in 1998 in this traditional industrial town, which of all places had turned terror-prone, thanks to the vote-bank politics pursued by kursi-bhakts. And we deshbhakts should defeat them.” Coimbatore’s electorate had promptly done its patriotic deed by giving the BJP’s C P Radhakrishnan two successive freak wins in 1998 and 1999, before turning to other choices on bread and butter issues.

Modi, however, won’t let you lower your guard and move on in a hurry. If 1998 is too far behind, Mumbai is close enough. “Remember the five days of shame when the state vanished, when the Cabinet was sitting back and surfing TV channels on which the terrorists were freely giving interviews?”

... contd.