By D.N. Singh
A press conference in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi showing a virtual participation and sharing the occasion with party president Amit Shah, about little less than 48 hours before the polling for the final phase, was not for nothing is what certain pollsters feel about.
Wearing a look of fatigue, perhaps after a prolonged slugging in campaigns countrywide, Modi was a different persona. The press conference was too different because after being aggressive for five long years, Modi-Shah combo looked dull. Besides, an unstoppable orator and a man who has a penchant for taking the centre stage at any given occasion, the suave Modi was surprisingly ridden off that aggression at the opponent, and his self-imposed choice to play a second fiddle to Shah must have something in between the lines to read.
The brief narrative interjected by the PM was a sobered edition of what Modi was known for, and a politician with firepower that no present opponent can match up to gave an impression as if he was battling from within against some impulses of discomfiture.
Unwilling to take any straight question, a show of inability to answer anything on Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, his eyelids tending to drop and the usually glowing eyes writ with a look of tiredness. All of it were a manifestation of a situation when uncertainties loom over us.
At certain points, Modi was not only torn between an urge to speak and a self-imposed shyness, for a while it appeared like demonstration of dignity of certain grief that bothered him.
What was bothering the most powerful man of the country ? Was it May 23 premonitions or just when one gets humbled by exultation? It is a quiz for students of political science.
