Stupid. There’s no other word to describe Varun Gandhi’s communal tirade that is now the talk of the capital—and indeed the rest of India. Why, even the hard-core saffron brigade is now looking positively genial by comparison. Did he really stop thinking for a minute and say those incendiary things as the media reports or was it all doctored, as he insists? Unless he can conclusively prove it’s a frame-up, Varun—and the party bosses who have given him a ticket—have been left with egg on their face. 10 Janpath must be pleased.

It was perhaps inevitable that even before the dust settled on the horrific attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, the Pakistanis began the blame game—while government officials alluded to a ‘foreign hand’ (how many times have we heard that before?), TV channels in the country went flat out and accused RAW of masterminding the attack. It’s time for the country to get real and clean the dirt from their own doorstep before looking over the fence at the neighbour. Unfortunately, Islamabad’s policy of providing sanctuary to terrorist groups over the decades has now rebounded on itself. Will thinking minds in the country wake up and smell the coffee and act? Otherwise, the Talibanisation of the country will be complete. The implications of that for India are almost too horrific to contemplate.

The day of reckoning is here. The elections have been announced with the first phase set to begin on April 16. Now the games will begin as our political parties scramble for allies and partners—will we see interesting new alignments or will they stick with the true and tried? Can the Congress hope to go it alone as a viable national party or will the Sonia-Rahul-Manmohan factor prove to be a damp squib? Will the NDA stay as cohesive as the BJP proclaims it will? And what impact will loose cannons like Mayawati and Jayalalitha have this time around? So many questions, all of which will be answered through what promises to be a blistering summer.