As the political climate heats up, one man has been on the road non-stop for over a month, convincing voters in his state to choose a better alternative this time round.

In these dying days of the UPA regime, to make up for lost time, our opinion-makers are busy clearing a backlog. Hardly a day goes by without a valiant new signature campaign, or a last-gasp effort to save secularism for posterity, or recalling gas chambers and concentration camps.

I think he may have spotted me. Damn. I duck and take cover behind an Ambassador. A minute passes. What now? Is he looking at me still?

Every party manifesto contains an odd word or two that catches people’s attention. For the Congress, it is Secularism – frequent usage of which has obliterated its true meaning altogether.