Narendra Modi attempts poetic makeover in Vajpayee’s Lucknow

LUCKNOW: Perhaps it was the overwhelming identification of Lucknow with poet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that when BJP’s PM aspirant Narendra Modi arrived in town on Sunday, he too turned to poetry. Modi not only recited Urdu shayari in the land of Nawabs, he also recited a long patriotic poem about rebuilding the nation in the end. This was Modi’s eighth rally in UP.

The road to the Rama Bai Rally ground was dotted with the pictures of Modi and Vajpayee, who represented the Lucknow seat for five consecutive terms from 1991 to 2004.

An ailing Vajpayee has retired from public life and the Lucknow seat is now represented by his onetime protégé, Lalji Tandon.

The main stage from where the leaders delivered their speeches had an imposing image of Vajpayee. It had 272+ written at both ends in small but very visible font sizes, highlighting BJP’s resolve to attain a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha. “When I come to Lucknow I am reminded of Atalji. I learnt so much from him,” Modi said as he started his speech. “Atalji used to say the road to Delhi passes through Lucknow.”

In the typical Vajpayee style of regaling audiences with poems, Modi tried a hand at shayari. “Hum bhi wahin hain, tum bhi wahin ho, badal raha hai zamana kaise kaise (I am the same, you are the same, but see how the world around us is changing),” he recited while describing the degradation of the city’s infrastructure and beauty under the SP and BSP governments.

For a moment it seemed that Modi was attempting a poetic makeover in Vajpayee’s Lucknow, under the looming giant image of the former PM with his comrades from the past — Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti and Lalji Tandon — on the stage.

Singh, who had walked out of the BJP just ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, was incidentally inducted back in the BJP on Sunday.