 "Vikas Mahante")
That man, of course, is not Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party's nominee for prime minister, but he looks like the Gujarat chief minister, and talks like him too. Meet Vikas Mahante, a 52-year-old from Mumbai's Malad locality. The real Modi, hard-pressed for time addressing rally after rally across the country, could well turn to this Mumbaikar for help, for there is little to separate the two in appearance.
As I arrive at the residence of the Modi doppleganger, he is just wrapping up another interview. Mahante has been interviewed by India News, Zee News, Sahara Samay and News 24. The anchors question him about the changes in his life brought about by being a Modi lookalike. They also ask him about security problems. Mahante tells his interviewers of how his family - mother, wife and two sons - was initially apprehensive about him campaigning when people pelted stones at him at a function in Dharavi in his initial days as a Modi stand-in. But seeing the response of the people now, he feels, they have come around. He faces no security problem either.
Clad in a black, striped T-shirt and glasses, Mahante rattles off his plans for the evening, mentioning among them live debates on television channels. His son, Pratik Mahante, who handles the administrative part, is fixing up more interviews for his father.
It's not just the looks and mannerisms of Modi that Mahante has got down pat. The Mumbaikar shares Modi's love for poetry as well as his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) lineage. Mahante says he was a member of the RSS Malad shakha earlier. And, he adds, don't forget that his name, Vikas, echoes the appellation 'Vikash Purush' used for Modi.
Mahante caught the media's attention at a Holi party in Mumbai where photographers first noticed his similarity to the BJP strongman. Since then, he has become used to people asking him for photographs and autographs. Mahante says he obliges because it is not possible for the Gujarat chief minister to meet everyone.
A roadside greengrocer pegs Mahante's likeness to Modi at "80 per cent". The owner of a gym that Mahante goes to tells of how people queue up to click photos with him. Mahante says he understands people's craze to meet Modi because he too once yearned to meet the BJP leader. He got his chance in August last year. It started with the Vidhan Sabha elections in Gujarat in 2012, when he campaigned for Ramanbhai Patkar in Umbergaon town of Gujarat's Valsad district. In acknowledgement of Mahante's help, the victorious Patkar took Mahante to meet the chief minister. "Prachar kaise karoge (How will you help our cause)?" Mahante recalls Modi asking him at a brief meeting. Unlike now, he had never contemplated he could campaign for BJP, so he just muttered something like "Dekhte hain".
Being the splitting image of Modi has its compulsions, admits Mahante. He has just given orders for more cotton kurtas as people expect him to dress like Modi. An orange shawl is often thrown in to symbolise the saffron party. Mahante, who runs a packaging business out of Vasai, has an easy connect with people on the streets and as we walk down the stairs from his home, I can see why he has a future in politics. He too doesn't deny his political ambitions, but says that he is currently not a member of any political party. "If any party gives me the right opportunity, I don't rule out joining politics," he says.
He also sees politics as an opportunity to help people. Listing the price spiral, Naxal problem and communal riots as the evils plaguing the country, with corruption as the root of all evils, Mahante also drags Pakistan and China into his prospective agenda. However, quite contrary to his original, he stoutly refuses to make any comment on the anti-corruption crusader, Arvind Kejriwal.
NO MORE POLITICS
Far from Mumbai, in Delhi's Jangpura Extension, a line of houses bears name-plates that say 'Rahejas', 'Sachdevas', 'Kharbandas'... Most residents here are descendants of refugees who crossed over from Pakistan's Punjab province in 1947 to begin life from scratch in India's capital. Somewhere down the lane, you come across a house with the name-plate 'Sethis'. Like other houses nearby, it is a big one, a kothi.
Inside the house, as you enter the hall, the first things you see are three framed photographs. In one, two spectacled Sikh gentlemen, both in white kurtas and powder-blue dastars (headgear), smile at the camera. One of them is Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. The other bears a striking resemblance to the head of government, the only difference being his beard in a chin-strap that contrasts with the Congress leader's sparse growth. He is Gurmit Singh Sethi, Manmohan Singh's lookalike. He is also a successful businessman and a one-time active member of the Congress.
It is not just their physical appearances that have bound Singh and Sethi. Both are refugees from Pakistan - Singh from Gah in Chakwal and Sethi from Sheikhupura near Lahore. Both are Khatri Sikhs. And both belong to the Kukhran biradri, the nine-clan sub-grouping among Khatris. Sethi's family migrated from Sheikhupura to Amritsar, then to Karnal, before moving to Indore and finally to Delhi.
"My father was first introduced to politics in the 1970s by veteran Congressman P C Sethi and Arjun Singh, former union ministers," says Sarabdeep, Sethi's older son. The first role in the party was as the All India Congress Committee's media coordinator. "He also served as president of the Delhi State Youth Congress," adds Sarabdeep. There are photographs of Sethi with Indira Gandhi, her sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, Shankar Dayal Sharma, Chandra Shekhar and many others Congress leaders.
Sethi first met Manmohan Singh when Singh became the finance minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government. When Singh contested his first election in 1999 from New Delhi, which he lost, Sethi was his campaign head.
It was Singh who first told Sethi that he resembled him. Six months before the 2004 elections, Sethi's beard turned grey. "That was when Manmohan Singhji pointed out the resemblance," says Sarabadeep. "After the polls, when Manmohan Singhji became prime minister, people too started mistaking my father for him."
Sethi continued to be a loyal party worker and campaigned for both the Congress and Singh in 2009. His most recent campaign was in December last year, during the Delhi assembly elections.
With Singh now preparing to bow out of prominence, Sethi too is nowhere to be seen. He left India for Toronto in December last year to stay with his younger son. "I have left India for good," says Sethi on the phone from Toronto. "I was tired of the way Congress politicians were behaving. They have ruined the nation with their corruption. All they know is how to fill their pockets. I could not stand all that. I am someone who once resigned from a government committee when offered a bribe."
What does he have to say about the other political parties? "I was drawn to the Aam Aadmi Party. But you never know these politicians, what their neeyat (motive) is," he says cynically. Just like the man he resembles, Sethi too has bid adieu to the rough and tumble of Indian politics.
