Disclaimer: Of course, I didn’t snag an interview with the real ‘Rahul’. That was just clickbait, and boy, did you fall for it!
But you see I can’t help it. Because everyone and their chacha wants to talk to the man of the match; the man who dealt a significant blow to the BJP in the Hindi heartland and literally told them to, Talk to the Hand.
After all, it is not easy to dislodge the saffron party out of power in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and be almost on the verge of making a sarkaar in Madhya Pradesh.
But since the real Rahul probably will never pick my call, I got my colleague and senior news editor at Quint Hindi, Arun Pandey, to pose as the ‘fake’ Rahul and answer questions on his behalf.
This 'Rahul’ told me how the victory in Chattisgarh was the sweetest for him, since his party had been underestimated a lot prior to the elections there. He also told me what the wins in Rajasthan and the performance in Madhya Pradesh meant for him.
I could sense that this Rahul was looking more and more confident ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He also felt his namesake had finally arrived on the political pitch, exactly a year after he took over the top job, i.e. on 11 December.
My final bit from this ‘interview’: That this ‘Rahul’ takes his inspiration from none other than the cricketing legend, Marvan Atapattu. Who had the worst possible start to a Test career, recording embarrassing ducks and zeroes in his first six innings, but went on to score 16 centuries in Test cricket and even become the Captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team.
After all, don’t they always say that picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!
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