By now everybody knows that the suave Shashi Tharoor gets an occasional rap or two on the knuckles for sometimes being the bad boy of the Congress party. By now everybody also knows that the BJP too has its own enfant terrible in Shatrughan Sinha who sups, sorry, has tea with the Opposition.
It was, therefore, a breeze to drive with Sinha into Nitish Kumar's bungalow on Circular Road in Patna last week, even on an evening when the chief minister was grappling with Modi's rallies, readying his counter-attacks and drawing up battle plans for the Bihar polls. An electoral alliance that includes the fodder controversy-tainted Lalu Prasad requires hard sell. But still, one could manage a quick meeting with the chief minister when one was accompanying the BJP MP whose face opens gates in a jiffy. There were, as usual, no security stops, and there was Nitish's right hand man and JDU spokesperson Pavan Varma to greet Sinha with the warmth of a buddy and escort him into the chief minister's den.
Late evening at Nitish Kumar's place, there were enough people bustling around or waiting in the anteroom to indicate that this was a beehive of activity.
The trio - the chief minister, his spokesperson and Sinha - stayed closeted in the office for a few minutes over cups of chai. Soon I was ushered in to join them, with statesman Nitish Kumar giving all the right political answers to my queries. Tape recorder put away, the chief minister relaxed and graciously said, "Coffee toh peeke jayiye ." It was an offer I had to politely turn down since I don't get my caffeine highs from coffee or tea. A job accomplished is a high enough. But the evening wasn't over for the trio that continued to confab in the den by itself for a few minutes more.
That their meetings turned out to be more about a college in the name of Sinha's father Bhuvaneshwar Prasad than about crossing the floor was still not out in the public domain.
What else transpired between them, I can't say. But what I can say is that Pavan Varma, who rather likes the sound of his own voice as one must have noticed on the numerous TV debates he figures in, has close bonds with Shatrughan Sinha, which is actually no big revelation. Like several politicians, the diplomat-turned-politician and Rajya Sabha member likes old Hindi film songs and will reel off the names of the singer, the composer and the lyricist of every number he hears. It also accounts for Varma's penchant for fraternising with the glamour world which is another trait common to most politicians.
Pavan Varma is also as fond of writing as he is of talking. Apart from the occasional piece he writes for the dailies, Varma often refers to the books he has authored. But in the hurly-burly of politics and political debates, he hasn't found the time to write the one book he has set his heart on. It's a book on Hinduism - no, he's not a BJP man.
Again like most politicians, Varma has a farmhouse which he doesn't have time to visit. Perhaps that's where he'll head to write his book when he's done with little political ploys like getting 50,000 Biharis to line up and have their DNA tested to counter the PM's remark about Nitish's DNA.
The next afternoon, the stop was at the bungalow opposite Nitish Kumar's and it was quite the opposite as an experience too. It's where former chief minister and JDU's current partner Lalu Prasad resides. Without Shatrughan Sinha, there was a brief stop at the gate outside. Inside, it was as laidback as the chief minister's place was bustling.
Lalu himself apparently dozed off while talking to the person who was with him before me and one had to wait for his 40 winks to be over. But once he got talking, he was as politically astute as ever, running down Modi or the BJP in every second sentence.
Back from Bihar, it was time for a screening of Ketan Mehta's well-made biopic Manjhi: The Mountain Man . Kangana Ranaut, who had come to watch it, posed with an axe and said something profound like, "One must learn to break one's own mountains." Varun Dhawan, his Badlapur director Sriram Raghavan and producer Dinesh Vijan were so late that they hung around till interval just to meet everybody and go home. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who played Manjhi, came with wife Aaliya and had his perky little daughter on his lap all through the screening. All of them had seen the film before but this was Aaliya's favourite performance from her husband's body of work. So it rated another look.
On screen, Dashrath Manjhi's problems had the backdrop of the feudal cruelty of Bihar. It had to be Bihar all week.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
