Ahead of Thursday, Rahul Gandhi chills out with a sundae

Ahead of counting day on March 10, which will decide who will be elected from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has put out a picture of him eating a tall glass of ice cream, possibly some sundae, ahead of Thursday’s grind.

The Instagram post has been titled the Many Flavours of Wayanad, the constituency Gandhi represents in the Lok Sabha. The weather has been on the upswing, shedding its wintery mornings for the scorching spring sun in North India. It is much warmer in the South already, which has a fleeting chill which gets called winter.

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The former Congress president has been a star campaigner for the Congress in the states of Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur though he has maintained a lower profile in Uttar Pradesh. UP saw a spirited Congress campaign led by his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. That campaign has touched many with its slogan, ‘Ladki hoon, Lad sakti hoon’, which loosely translates to ‘I am a girl and can fight it out’. The slogan is a take-off on the Beti Padhao Beti Bachao slogan of the Narendra Modi government which has been criticised for crimes against women in Uttar Pradesh, particularly the Unnao rape case and the Hathras case.

The party has an uphill task in Uttar Pradesh but the disappointment lies in Punjab where it is likely to lose to the Aam Aadmi Party, according to the eager pollsters of the Delhi media based out of UP’s Noida. Goa and Uttarakhand seem to be headed for Congress gains but how MLAs will be shielded from the lure of the lucre remains to be seen. The Manipur Assembly is likely to stay with the BJP but all this is exit poll data.

What Thursday March 10 holds no one knows. In between, what else to do but enjoy a cold ice cream in humid Wayanad like Rahul Gandhi.

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