Third generation lucky?

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First impressions are often too loaded with expectation to be accurate. So I could be a trifle hasty when I say 19-year-old Aditya Thackeray is his father's son. He could turn into his firebrand uncle over the next few years, but right now, he's not there yet.

In a voice that probably never had to fight for even a candy bar, leave alone Marathi asmita, Aditya says, "I don't think of myself as Aditya Thackeray - I'm just Aditya going about everywhere, so be it the guards or anything else, I'm habituated to it. It's all cool." Did I expect that just because he was the grandson of Bal Thackeray, son of Uddhav Thackeray, and nephew of Raj Thackeray, he would reel off a sermon on the trials and tribulations of the Marathi manoos?

I'm surprised at his soft speech, impeccable manners, and the diplomatic interview - chatty as ever, yet never, not once, stepping out of bounds - way more diplomatic than you expect a well-heeled St. Xaviers' College teenager student to be. After the interview, his mother said, by way of explanation, "It has come from years of watching his father hold press conferences from the corridor behind".

I expect him to change into a kurta for the interview, but he continues to be dressed in blue jeans and a red Polo T-shirt, his trademark appearance even while accompanying his father to public events. He says he's under no pressure from family to be any different. "My father and granddad (who he makes it a point to spend an hour with everyday) have always given me a choice to follow whatever I want to in life, as long I give it my 100 percent". But it's clear Aditya's first foray into politics should be on the college strike issue - entering student politics would make him the perfect foil to his uncle's continuous bullying of the Sena's student wing, the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena - a key pillar of the Sena, headed by Raj since its inception, and still the target of his attempts to destabilize it. With bahu Smita Thackeray too denied a Rajya Sabha ticket from the Sena last year (many say that's what landed her in hospital with chest pain the next day), Aditya could just be the fresh blood the Sena is hoping to infuse the party with, in the not-so-distant future.

Three generations (four, including Prabhodhankar), I thought, could not have been more different. I can't imagine Aditya ever publishing a list of South Indian names occupying top positions in Maharashtra to prove to the Marathi manoos how weak they were - Balasaheb's first action to garner manic support in the '60s. Aditya's friends at college would no doubt balk at the idea. Remember, this was the same boy who came home indignant that enthusiastic Sena workers had put up a party poster with his photograph right outside his college. "He said, make them take it down immediately," his mother says with an amused smile.

Brash, bold, and fabulously intolerant, Balasaheb drew in the public that was thirsting for a champion. Uddhav is a toned down version, his inherent diffidence getting in the way of him and his cadre. Will Aditya's sophistication click with a mass base that has also undergone a generational metamorphosis of sorts: a mass base that has become more urbane, more impervious to political chicanery.

With Bal Thackeray's ill health keeping him away from the public eye, the party still grapples with what kind of radicalism to adopt, if at all. It's obvious that Raj's fiery kind continues to eat into the base of the Sena. This last Lok Sabha elections in May won't be forgotten in a hurry.. Gleeful with obtaining 6 percent of the vote, Raj's MNS swept 5 Assembly segments in Mumbai from right under the Sena's nose, leaving them with just 2 Assembly segments. The Maharashtrian's loyalty to Balasaheb would take them only so far - they're not giving Raj a victory, yet not willing to settle for Uddhav.

The third generation could make up for the shortcomings of the second, but in that sense, Aditya is not there yet. "I'm just 19, I haven't really thought about it," he says, "But if the people want me, I will. After all, it doesn't matter what I think, it's what they think."