Rounding off

So you thought the first thing that Narendra Modi did as soon as he hit Maximum City to address his mega rally was share a cuppa with his "brethren", the tea vendors? Nothing of the sort. Instead, the man who wants to be the prime minister first dashed off to a five-star hotel in the suburbs for the inauguration of his statue. The work in question isn't quite the same as the huge one he has planned for Sardar Patel, but a life-size likeness set in wax that is now housed in a private museum in Lonavala. Why the urgency to see a statue when so many photographs of the man appear on a daily basis? Apparently, Modi was very particular that the man making the piece had the Gujarat chief minister's vital stats right - or, should we say, politically correct. "No more than 38 inches at the girth," he is reported to have instructed the statue maker even though the latter admits Modi is, ahem, a more rounded personality.