(From left) RJD leaders Ghulam Gaus, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Ram Kripal Yadav and Ram Chandra Purbey at the function at Nritya Kala Mandir. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, July 5: The RJD turned fifteen today; its founder-father Lalu Prasad turned truant.

He probably knows better than the 2,000-odd faithful who had gathered in his benign absence to keep the lantern flame alive — if you are RJD there is very little to celebrate at the moment. Two successive drubbings, the latter more merciless than the former, and every possibility that the next bout might well deliver the party from escalating coma to burial.

Besides, Lalu Prasad is perhaps still quite overdosed on poor poll-time audiences to have bothered with the journey from Delhi. Not very long ago, a mere call from Lalu Prasad would summon a human flood into Patna; today they didn’t manage enough ranks to fill the modest — and sweaty — auditoriums of central Patna’s Nritya Kala Mandir. Lalu’s presence at the lead of such a loose and listless pack would probably have spoken more poorly of the state of the party than his absence. It sufficed that he smiled from a vinyl banner that made the backdrop of the stage.

The man himself was engaged in one more desperate bid to keep himself, if not his party, afloat — a well-timed 10 Janpath meeting with Sonia Gandhi that fuelled helpful speculation Lalu could be back in the Manmohan Singh cabinet. Survival for Lalu Prasad may not be so much a political urge at the moment as a personal necessity. Fodder scam cases against him are round the bend for closure and a cabinet perch — or at least the favour of the establishment — will work as insurance, he might believe.

“Lalu is a national leader,” exhorted RJD MP and leftover loyalist Ram Kripal Yadav. “National leaders don't grace any and every function, their blessings are enough.”

Little comfort for lesser followers who had arrived hoping to hear from the man himself. “Jo bhi aaya hai Laluji ke liye aaya hai, unke bina kaisi party aur kaisa sthapana diwas?” grumbled Ramjatan Rai, who had come from Sonepur across the Ganga. “Poster hi par dekhna hota to Sonepur hi mein dekh lete (People had come for Lalu, without him what party and what foundation day? If seeing him on posters was the idea I could have done that in Sonepur itself).”

It did not impress him that the other leading RJD light, Raghuvansh Prasad, seeded chief guest of the function, too had chosen not to come. That absence owes to growing differences between Lalu Prasad and Raghuvansh, but for the ordinary RJD worker, Raghuvansh’s absence doubled the disappointment. “Ours is a grassroots party and not a single elected MP was on stage. Is that how we are going to rebuild?” said one.