In a middle-class neighbourhood in south-west Delhi’s Inderpuri, Ram Lata is constantly on the phone.

“Yes, it has crossed 200... yes, congratulations to you, too,” she tells a relative from Ghaziabad.

Mayawati’s mother does not get tired attending congratulatory calls as father Prabhu Dayal, 82, sits by her side.

More visitors are coming in and more laddoos are being passed around. Many of the visitors are from a slum cluster 2 km away where Mayawati grew up. Away from the glare of television cameras, a modest family and their neighbours are celebrating the BSP leader’s landmark victory.

“You should have been here an hour ago, there were so many people who were dancing,” says Kishori Lal, who runs a tea stall in the neighbourhood.

There are no security guards, no party flags or banners and no cars with red beacons. At the house where Mayawati’s parents live, there are no symbols of VIPdom.

But there are symbols of her politics: On the walls are framed photographs of the icons of the backward movement, from Ambedkar, Periyar and Sri Narayana Guru to Kanshi Ram and, yes, Mayawati.

“We knew your Behenji would win. Both of us went to meet her on Wednesday and she was confident,” says Dayal who retired as a supervisor in the telecom department. “She has been a confident girl from her childhood.”

On her big day, anecdotes about Mayawati rain. “When she was three, she helped me find a cheque which I thought I had lost. She was good in studies as well as household work. She did LLB and BEd. But she also knew how to milk a buffalo,” says the proud father.

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