LK Advani did not, for the first time since the birth of the BJP, attend a national executive meeting this weekend. The 85-year-old pleaded illness, stayed home in Delhi had wrote a blog that talked about a wounded
Bhishma Pitamah lying on a bed of arrows in the Mahabharata.
On Monday, at about 2 pm, Mr Advani - one half of the Vajpayee-Advani duo that propelled the BJP from a party with two Lok Sabha MPs in 1984 to ruling party in 1996 - sent in his resignation letter to BJP chief Rajnath Singh. He has quit all party posts.
Mr Advani is angry that his objections to Narendra Modi being promoted to head a crucial election panel in the party were ignored. In Mr Modi's anointment many have also written the obituary of the Vajpayee-Advani era in the BJP. Mr Advani is Mr Modi's mentor and had at another Goa conclave 11 years ago, saved his job.
But the man who has fashioned himself on Sardar Vallabhai Patel, also called the Iron Man of India, has sent out a signal that he has much steel left in him yet. His resignation has thrown the party into unprecedented crisis.
Mr Modi's accession yesterday is seen by many as a step towards declaring the Gujarat Chief Minster the BJP's presumptive Prime Minster in 2014. Mr Advani, referred to by detractors as the BJP's perennial PM-in- waiting, was the man the BJP backed in that role in the 2009 elections. He is said to fancy his chance one more time.
And, LK Advani is not used to being snubbed in the BJP. For many years his word was law. He served as Atal Bihari Vajpayee's powerful Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, the hawkish foil to the soft-spoken, poet Prime Minister who used his legendary diplomatic skills to hold together a chariot called the National Democratic Alliance pulled by up to 23 very different horses, often in different directions.
Many years ago, LK Advani was the original Hindutva poster-boy. In 1986, after he became party president, Mr Advani gauged a chance to consolidate the Hindu vote-bank. He played not just the Hindutva plank and but also canny politics. In the 1989 elections, the BJP backed the Janata Dal's VP Singh, who became Prime Minister.
That year, he also launched the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. He converted a luxury bus into a rath and called his trip a Rath Yatra, not his last. It was flagged off from Somnath in Gujarat and he went from state to state mobilising support for a Ram temple be built at the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where he intended to end his yatra.
He didn't get there. Lalu Yadav, then Chief Minister of neighbouring Bihar, arrested him.
It all worked politically in the 1991 elections. The BJP was now the second largest party in the Lok Sabha, after the Congress. LK Advani was Leader of Opposition.
On December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid was demolished by kar sevaks. Mr Advani is one of the main people accused in the Babri Masjid case.
Much later, a much mellow Mr Advani would describe that day as the "saddest day of my life." By then he had reinvented himself.
Mr Advani was born in Karachi, now in Pakistan, in 1927. He studied to be a lawyer and made his political debut as a volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS. Even as Deputy PM he would be spotted proud in the RSS uniform of khaki shorts.
Hi political journey saw him join the Jan Sangh in 1951, the Janata Dal in 1977, when he became a minister in the Morarji Desai government and finally, the Bharatiya Janata Party when the Jan Sangh withdrew from the Janata Dal and regrouped into the new party in December 1980. In the 1984 elections the BJP won two seats; Mr Advani represented the party in the Rajya Sabha.
In 1996, the BJP was invited to form government as the single largest party with 161 seats. It would famously last 13 days, but the small right-wing party had arrived at the Centre. Two turbulent years later, the BJP was back in the saddle.
The Vajpayee-Advani did not expect to lose the 2004 elections. But they did and Mr Advani back as Leader of the Opposition. An unwell Mr Vajpayee retired and Mr Advani was now the BJP's tallest leader. In 2005 he had an open falling out with the RSS, which was furious that he had described Mohammad Ali Jinnah as a secular leader on a visit to Pakistan.
In December that year, Mr Advani quit as BJP president after the RSS suggested that the party needed new blood. He was 78.