I thought I knew Pramod, Pravin

I had known Pramod since early BJP days, when he would urge us to publish some press release or earnestly invite us to Vajpayee’s rallies. He was in his thirties then. Argumentative and energetic. Smart and self-confident. His rise up the political ladder didn’t make him lose these attributes. Pramod looks at the peak with self-assurance and thinks it is reachable. How many “candidates”, after all, would be eligible for the post of prime minister, say in 2009 or 2014?

To say that he is ambitious would be an understatement. But he always knew he had to work and struggle hard. That included networking and media management, moving with elite business houses and living five-star.

For a lower-middle class Brahmin family boy, that too from a backward village in Marathwada, the journey to Delhi was never going to be easy. In Maharashtra, to be Maratha by caste matters hugely. He is neither Maratha nor has any family link with political power. Being the son of a primary school teacher and member of a family owing allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, meant additional disqualifications. His political ambitions must have been fired after the defeat of the Congress and Indira Gandhi in 1977 and the Janata Party’s ascendance to power. Most opposition parties and persons realized for the first time then that the Congress could be ousted from the Centre, too.

Vajpayee and Advani, in their fifties then, became cabinet ministers in the Janata government. Thanks to Jayaprakash Narain, the Parivar had acquired legitimacy. Though the Janata experiment collapsed, opposition parties had tasted blood. The Bharatiya Janata Party began its march to power slowly but surely. Neither did the marginalisation in 1980 elections nor the1984 elections, when its strength was reduced to just two in Lok Sabha, demoralised it.

It was during...