Not Spartan

In the movie 300, King Leonidas says: “No retreat, no surrender. That is Spartan law.” Irom Chanu Sharmila is from Manipur, not Sparta. She has nothing to do with 300; but 90 is one figure she will find hard to live down. That is the number of votes her party PRJA bagged in the recent Assembly elections. After 5,840 days of activism and fasting and 144 days as a politician, she quit politics within minutes of her first-ever electoral loss. 

Which reminds us: What has happened to Agatha Sangma?

Shahenshah

That was the year Amitabh Bachchan joined politics persuaded by Rajiv Gandhi. His last film Coolie (1983) had ruptured his spleen but also topped the box office. He contested and won from Allahabad, defeating Lok Dal’s H.L. Bahuguna. He quit three years later. In an interview, Bachchan called politics a cesspool. He signed Shahenshah soon after.

Which reminds us: Deepika Chikhalia was the Sita of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana that aired from 1987 to 1988. In 1991, she contested on a BJP ticket from Baroda and won. At some point she quit quietly to join her 
husband’s cosmetics business.

Endgame

After a controversial tenure as India’s CEC, T.N. Seshan contested the 1997 presidential election against K.R. Narayanan as an Independent candidate backed by the Shiv Sena. He got 240 votes to Narayanan’s 4,231. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, he was the Congress candidate from Gandhinagar. He lost to Advani.

Which reminds us: Nilekani joined Congress in 2014; contested and lost from Bangalore South. Ever the techie, he declares his political status thus: “inactive”. 

Bravity

Tarkeshwari Sinha did not flirt with politics. She dived into it. Her stint was longish, but not long. She was successful but nothing close to what she would have been in another context. Indira Gandhi disliked her and after the Congress split she joined the Morarji camp. In a 2007 piece in The Telegraph Ashok Mitra wrote of the feisty politician from Bihar: “Even though she maintained her links with one faction of what emerged as the Janata Dal, it was not quite the same again. At a certain juncture, she disappeared from the political rostrum.” 

Which reminds us: Sinha had won four elections. Irom Sharmila lost the one and lost out.