The BJP’s election campaign in Gujarat was all about Chief Minister Narendra Modi: the man and the mask. It was a campaign by Modi, his address was peppered with references to himself and in many instances addressed to people behind the ‘Modi masks’.
Modi doesn’t leave his reclusive persona at office; he takes it home. He has a slim staff at home and if his cook or help turns up late, he’d rather rustle up something himself than call someone else.
His love for his laptop is known but his other personal likes and dislikes aren’t that well known. ‘‘The CM likes to listen to Call of the Valley series of instrumental music if he gets time, but mostly he is busy with his laptop scouring for the latest in technology,’’ says Dhiren Avasia, Modi’s media advisor and someone who gets to spend a lot of time at the CM’s bungalow.
But even a one-man show needs a few people to run it. Modi has a few aides: hard-boiled politicians, technocrats, and 20-something loyalists, who over five years, have contributed to the creation of the enigmatic aura around Modi.
But Modi has ensured that even the closest aide isn’t confident of being the most proximal to the CM. ‘‘He is sharp at spotting a person’s talent, and equally sharp at limiting that individual’s use to that field. He keeps only one egg in one basket,’’ says a top bureaucrat in the Modi administration.
So if in Kakuji, Modi has a Man Friday, almost a younger brother, who has stood with him through troubled times, in Kaka he has an able fundraiser who can independently conceive grand projects. The list includes a graphic designer who conceptualised the Modi mask that was the most visible sign of the BJP campaign in Gujarat, an IT brain who worked on how to project Modi in the NRI community, and punched SMSes reinforcing Modi’s Hindutva face; a minister who initiated the Jyoti Gram power project; and yet another who gave him the Sohrabuddin issue. A call to Modi will invariably pass through one of his three PAs, who shadow the chief minister on his tours.
These are the men who are at just an arm’s length of the reclusive Modi.

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