As he turns 70 on September 17, we ask you, dear reader, have you met Prime Minister Modi?
Thank you, Mr Prime Minister, for bringing colour to our colourless, drab, despair-ridden lives.
Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi was the centre of attention at the pran pratishtha ceremony of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party leaving its rivals comfortably behind in states like Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the initial rounds of vote counting, its leaders credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governance model for the expected win and said "new history" is being created in UP.
What some of our leaders were up to on Tuesday, November 15.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tracks Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's project-launching spree with just about three months to go for the assembly election in India's most populous state.
'The north east people are complaining, but the BJP is not listening to our voice.'
On Monday night, when President Ram Nath Kovind presented the Padma awards at a civil investiture ceremony in the Darbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the loudest applause was reserved for Swami Sivananda, the 125-year-old yoga guru who walked barefoot to receive the Padma Shri -- after prostrating before Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and President Kovind.
'You can't pull down the nation's builders and architects to please the people in power.'
The BJP enters challenging times where it has been given a task to hold onto the values of Ram in running the country as defined by Narendra Modi in Ayodhya, notes Sheela Bhatt.
Elections are due in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal that year. Early indications show Bengal holds promise for the BJP, but the party may have to recast itself to win Tamil Nadu.
Saisuresh Sivaswamy/Rediff.com decodes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech after the Pran Prathistha ceremony at Ram Temple in Ayodha.
'He was a nobody then.' 'And whatever little his contribution was there, it was restricted to Gujarat.'
The movie presents a version of Modi that the bhakts wants the rest of us to see, feels Utkarsh Mishra.
'It is a fight for principles for him, where he shall be presenting his protest to the wrongdoings.'
'Rama is Lord God of maryada. Today's maryada is the Constitution.'
Modi believes that the Congress leadership does not have the political sagacity to undertake a course correction because of its preoccupation about not losing its current gains in the voter base, observes Shekhar Iyer.
The Statue of Unity, touted as the world's tallest statue, will be nearly twice as tall as New York's famed Statue of Liberty. Check out all that you need to know about India's tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
'The story of how Modi won a re-election in the face of severe agrarian crisis, mounting unemployment, looming economic crisis, is the story of how the power of the message can be put to devastating effect in the hands of a strong leader,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
If the bribe-for-PPE-supply controversy in Himachal escalates, the BJP could have a lot to lose.
'He couldn't hold himself from chanting 'Siyavar Ramchandra ki Jai'.'
'We should not underestimate the power of Hindutva.'
Not only will Arun Govil, Sunil Lahiri and Deepika Chikhalia attend the Pran Pratistha ceremony, Moti Sagar, Ramanand Sagar's son, also received an invitation.
'I feel the more I'm trolled by Pakistanis, the more I am on the right path.' 'I must be doing something right for them to be so angry.'
Communalising law and order situations is fraught with danger; we need to tread cautiously. Interjecting a communal angle into what is purely a law and order issue does nobody good; it muddies the picture, fuels unrequited passion and distracts us from the core issue, says Vivek Gumaste.
'In his first speech in Parliament, Modi spoke about the slavery of 1,400 years, and though he didn't say in so many words, the meaning was that he had come to re-establish a Hindu Rashtra.'
'It did not start as a Hindutva slogan.' 'It started to tease the TMC and slowly it got internalised and the BJP started countering with Jai Shri Ram slogans because Mamata was getting provoked.'
'And Sir, you are at fault if they don't like you. 'You don't boast of your government's efforts to be the first one to bring in thousands of Indians back home without thinking for a second about their race, religion, language, orientation, or even citizenship,' says Sarang, a reader of Rediff.com.
By presenting the battle in Bengal as one between Mamata on one side and Modi-Shah on the other, the saffron camp has projected the former as a larger-than-life figure, a portrayal which has the potential of turning her into Modi's main competitor in 2024, predicts Amulya Ganguli.
No longer, Virendra Kapoor points out, are these awards given on the recommendation of ministers, or the Delhi-based liaison men who had ruled the roast till 2014.
'They are happy for the Hindu community as Ram Lalla is consecrated in Ayodhya.'
Just as the superstars of Indian cricket only play IPL and international fixtures and ignore the Ranji and Mushtaq Ali trophies in domestic cricket, Narendra Modi should play a very limited role in state assembly elections, argues Sudhir Bisht.
Rajinikanth is the third cinema personality after the late thespian Sivaji Ganesan and the late director K Balachander, also Rajinikanth's mentor, to have been chosen for the award from Tamil Nadu.
Just six years after his father's Rath Yatra, the BJP came to power in New Delhi in 1996, points out Jayant Advani.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
Wouldn't it be better to join the celebrations with the vast Hindu majority while at the same time criticising Mr Modi/BJP/RSS for politicising it? notes Shekhar Gupta.
Most politicians and even non-politicians have been honoured because of what they were purported to be electorally worth for the ruling party of their time, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
'We would try our best that the temple structure becomes visible in the next two years.'
For many, he is the Dhirubhai Ambani of Kerala. For others, he is the most influential Indian in West Asia. M A Yusuff is back in the spotlight after the controversy surrounding the UAE's reported offer of a Rs 7 billion aid package for flood-hit Kerala.
Other strong men have stopped Modi and his hordes in states before, but none of them with a footprint or battle cry to shake up New Delhi, observes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
