Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, they say. Birthdays, too, can be quite useful. For a politician who was until the other day in bad odour for her role in the infamous Taj Heritage Corridor scam, BSP President Mayawati certainly managed to get a lot out of her birthday celebrations on Thursday, what with the Capital’s most powerful denizens knocking at her door with elaborate bouquets, gifts, kind words of support and promptly proceeding to eat out of her hand.

Let’s just say that with a General Election in the air, the original BSP factor — not Bijli Sadak Pani this time but Bahujan Samaj Party — has kicked in. Being coy is no virtue in a universe that believes in working hard and playing harder to strike the right coalitions. The possibility of gaining power at the Centre through some fancy footwork is enough to dissipate past prejudices and dissolve old egos. Everybody’s Holy Grail at the moment is the Dalit Vote. Sonia Gandhi, in her new found zeal to stitch up a grand coalition against the NDA, was the first in the queue with an enormous bouquet that couldn’t have expressed her inner desires better. Bearing a smaller bouquet — commensurate perhaps with the BJP’s reduced chances of winning the lady over to its fold — was the party spokesman, the ever verbal Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. The CPM’s indestructible Harkishen Singh Surjeet brought up the rear. The three birthday party guests together signified the old adage that in politics there are no permanent enemies.