Then the Strong Leader people. The NDA has a fraction more than the UPA? It’s because Manmohan Singh mumbles inaudibly. The UPA holds on by a whisker?

Advani’s chance came too late. If they had projected Narendra Modi, it would have been different. Look at the response to his rallies! Never mind. Agli baari.

But why’d these first reactions matter at all? Consider: five years ago, people said the NDA had thrown it away because of “India Shining”. This assumed “India Shining” mattered: if they’d won, it would have been because India was Shining; if they lost, it was because India was Not. And that first reaction shaped the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA, and the Congress’s politics since. And so powerful is its hold that the possibility that 2004 was decided by upwardly mobile swing voters is forgotten.

So, as people discuss the minutiae of coalition-building — “wooing” (which comes after rather than before “feelers”, apparently) and suchlike — keep these grains of salt handy for when they tell you what went wrong, and what the mandate’s for. After all, The Voter doesn’t deliver a Mandate. She votes for a candidate. 543 of them win. For at least 543 different reasons. That’s the actual, grand narrative to focus on.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com