Stripped down to their waists and with their torsos painted in a dark shade of green, three supporters of Rashtriya Janata Dal, or RJD, chief Lalu Yadav today reached the home of his wife Rabri Devi to pay obeisance to their leader.
They shouted slogans against the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, for recent raids. One of them came riding a buffalo.
The buffalo-rider's name is Natwarlal, which prompted laughter among the people gathered there, as it was also the name of a conman, who incidentally belonged to Siwan, a district adjacent to Lalu Yadav's ancestral Gopalganj.
One of the two companions of Natwarlal was Mithilesh Pandit, who said they came all the way from Mahua in Vaishali district, 45 km away. They said they considered Tejashwi Yadav their "pitaji" (father) while Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi were "dada-dadi" (grandparents).
They said the image of the lantern - RJD's election symbol - was indicative of their reverence while the slogans against the CBI expressed the anguish they felt over their leader's "harassment through fabricated corruption cases".
"Lalu-ji keeps talking to us over phone even when he is in Ranchi or Delhi. He wanted to see us. So here we are," one of them said.
They said they had taken off their clothes since "children have nothing to hide from parents" and the buffalo was "a symbol of our leader's journey. He started off herding cattle and reached the top".
The RJD chief came out of the house soon afterward, in a long cavalcade that headed for the assembly where his daughter Misa Bharti was filing her nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha poll.
The three men were asked to leave by security personnel, who said, "Sahib (Lalu Yadav) is a Shiv-bhakt (devotee of Lord Shiva). His presence here attracts Shiv-ji ki baraat".
