Amethi:
Rehan and Miraya Vadra, accompanying mother Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as she campaigns in Uttar Pradesh, makes for more than just a rare photo-op. For, the older denizens of Amethi say it makes for a walk down memory lane.
Senior citizen Baburam harks back to the 1984 to 1989 period when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi would visit his Lok Sabha constituency, with the young Rahul and Priyanka with him.
Rahul and Priyanka would accompany their father to religious and spiritual places in the constituency, reminisces another old-timer, Ram Murti Shukla. Rahul Gandhi now represents Amethi in the Lok Sabha and ever since he first contested elections from here, people fondly draw comparisons between him and his father.
His younger sister Priyanka Gandhi has been camping in the Amethi-Rae Bareli pocketborough of the Gandhi family for the last week and has been campaigning aggressively for the ongoing UP Assembly elections, being looked upon as a test of brother Rahul's political weight. Her children and husband Robert Vadra joined her this week.
"It was here that the two Gandhi children apparently learned the basics of politics and got to know the reality of real India and today we saw a kind of history being repeated", said Congress district unit president CSM Nagar Prem Narain Tewari.
Clearly, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would rather that nothing much is read into her bringing her children along. "They are always with me...I have brought them to see the picture of villages of UP and how people live here and spend their lives," she said.
Rahul's sister wants to talk Mayawati instead. She lashed out at the UP Chief Minister at a rally on Friday for what she called her misrule in UP and had a snigger for the BSP chief's remark that the Congress has to seek votes through a door-to-door campaign because it has neglected development. "If someone starts attacking you, it shows that they consider themselves to be losers," Ms Vadra said.