Tango

L.K. Advani is flying from one meeting to another, fighting probably the last and most significant election of his life. Manini Chatterjee reports

For the past several weeks, Lal Krishna Advani has been spending a lot of time in a new home — actually two — in the skies.

The first is a Hawker, a neat airplane with gleaming wood-panelled interiors and plush leather seats, which takes him every morning from Delhi to the starting point of the day’s campaign trail.

He then hops on to a Bell 412 helicopter, a specially designed nine-seat VIP version, which criss-crosses India’s hinterland — touching down periodically amid great clouds of dust in some nondescript town or rural settlement — to campaign relentlessly in what is probably the last and most significant election of his life.