Midway through the election campaign in Telangana, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) changed his narrative. KCR made it seem to the electorate that it needed to choose between him -a son of the soil - and Chandrababu Naidu, who would end up ruling Telangana by remote control from Amaravati. The ploy worked.
At an event in Chennai to unveil his life-size statue on Sunday, his son and now DMK chief MK Stalin referred to Karunanidhi's endorsement for members of the Gandhi family and ended up continuing the tradition.
Telangana has only 17 Lok Sabha seats - conventionally too small a number to make a difference in the New Delhi political theatre. But if he manages to effect as vast a victory as he did for the state election - and India delivers a hung verdict - KCR's political orbit could expand exponentially.
On the campaign trail in Telangana, KT Rama Rao used a cricketing analogy while speaking to NDTV. He was confident that like Virat Kohli, his father and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR "would hit a century in the Telangana test"
As Telangana prepares to vote tomorrow, a look back at what stood out in the months and weeks of campaigning. Here are my 10 takeaways from the Telangana election campaign.
One thing is certain: December 11 will see both resplendent moonshine and a lunar eclipse in Telangana. That's because in the Chandra' vs Chandra' electoral battle, only one of them - K Chandrasekhar Rao or N Chandrababu Naidu - can shine when the results are counted.
Unlike what usually happens during a disaster, the Kerala government has not faced severe criticism for what went wrong on the ground. Popular perception has been that the political class, bureaucracy, civil society and of course the people of Kerala worked well together to overcome the adversity.
Not the EPS-OPS Vs TTK-Sasikala wrangle, not the farmers issue, not even what Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth said, it is Anitha who has become the top headline, creating a huge social and political uproar in Tamil Nadu.
For nearly the entire week of the Jallikattu protests on Chennai's Marina's Beach, I was present and reporting. It felt like an extended picnic, day and night. A rare occasion of collective strength and joy and hope was being celebrated.
I did not go as a journalist. I went without a camera, with a friend who belonged to the Jain community to know more about and understand the circumstances that led to her death.
Within hours of a teenager being rescued with multiple injuries from the home of her father in Hyderabad, came the case of an 11-year-old child forced to work as a domestic help. NDTV's team was part of the rescue operation on Wednesday.
