Some things you may not know about... S M Krishna a) The suave, US-educated lawyer saw politics first-hand first in America - when he was part of John F Kennedy's campaign in student days. b) He rode a cycle to court on his first day to work as a lawyer. c) He has a keen interest in fashion designing - so much that Kannada tabloids labelled him 'Tailor Krishna' and speculated that he'd have been a tailor (for want of a Kannada translation for 'designer') if he hadn't taken up politics. d)'Sullu Helisida Krishna' (The Krishna who got people to tell 'lies') is the headline that ran in some Kannada papers when he allowed, as Assembly speaker, the word 'lie' ('sullu' in Kannada) to be used in the Assembly. Until then, 'lying' or 'lies' were considered 'unparliamentary' and MLAs were asked to use the term 'far from the truth' when they wanted to talk about false claims of the government! Krishna felt that,...

Whew! The sparring and the name-calling is over. And at the end of all that 'breaking your arm' and 'cutting your head' speeches that we've endured in the last few weeks from our (yes, 'honourable') netas, I'm left feeling sick. Maybe I haven't seen enough of the past 14 General Elections, but as gruesome speeches go, this election has certainly been like some mafia novel, live. Amar, Akbar, Anthony And at the very core of all this 'hand-cutting' and 'head-splitting,' are Amar, Akbar and Anthony. And I actually mean core - the Bangalore Central constituency. To many, this constituency has come to mean a remake of that Amitabh-Bachchan film. For, the candidates are PC Mohan (a Hindu) from the BJP, Zameer Ahmed Khan (a Muslim) from the JD(S) and HT Sangliana (a Christian) from the Congress. It's an even fight and a tough fight. All three are strong contenders. Sangliana surprised everyone in the last election by defeating Congress'...

There were no proclamations of 'Soniaaaaa... I love you' from the crowd, but let's admit it - there was one thing the Sonia Gandhi rally did to all the Cong's horses and all the Cong's men in Karnataka - they sat together for a good hour and a half, which is no mean achievement! The 'Bharat Nirman rally' (yes, that's what it was called, though everyone thought it was just called the 'Sonia Gandhi rally') in Davangere saw some 2 lakh plus people from across Karnataka coming together to listen to the desh ki bahu. (Or perhaps they just came to see her helicopter... there was certainly a clamour to take a look at that.) That's got to be good news for a party that's been a divided house for a long time in the state - one joke goes that there are more factions of the Karnataka Congress than there are leaders. But here they were - together in their starched dhotis,...

That's the basic tenet that most politicians build on. Well, after claiming, explaining, exclaiming and re-claiming to the media everyday for the last 30 days that, no, his son won't be the Lok Sabha candidate from Shimoga, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa has gone (to dilli durbar) and done the predictable. He's ensured his son IS contesting. The state BJP unit had been asked to send a short-list of possible candidates to the party's Central election committee to finalise the names of its Lok Sabha candidates. From Shimoga, the short-list was really short -- it had one name -- B Y Raghavendra. So, after living in denial for weeks together, the BJP has finally proved itself wrong in saying it won't go by dynastic polity. In fact, the short-lists from various districts are filled with sons, nephews, sisters and brothers of the party's MLAs. We think it's the JDS' turn now to prove itself wrong! P.S. : What's...