Yes, without the fertile imagination and genius of a Chidambaram, the world would never have heard about Hindu Terror. Without his ‘Hand’, Ishrat Jehan would have remained a mere Lashkar-e-Taiba fidayeen. He anointed her a martyr of ‘fake encounter’. He even ‘FIR’ed the imagination of an entire nation by altering the FIR in Ishrat Jehan encounter case.

Out of power in Gujarat since the mid-1990s, Chidambaram gave Congress their best chance to defeat Modi in 2012 by sending Amit Shah to jail and then getting him banished from Gujarat. Nobody can blame Chidambaram for not having tried his best to keep Modi and Shah away from Delhi. He was the man who made best use of CBI to achieve his goal of eliminating Modi. Unfortunately, the CBI couldn’t do justice to the missionary zeal of their boss and both Modi and Shah escaped.

What did Chidambaram get for all these acts of ‘patriotism and loyalty’ to India’s First Family, the Con’gress? Today, the former Home Minister’s murky financial deals have forced ED and CBI to stick a look-out notice outside house. CBI, the Parrot that he had once caged, has turned into an Eagle and is hunting him down. Alas, how the giant wheel of time has turned!

“From being a Maal Gaadi, the Congress party has turned into a ‘Bail Gaadi’. This is how some people have described the plight of Congress party. Congress had all the maal (goods) when they were in power. Today, Chidambaram and his family alone have accumulated over 25 bails from different Courts. Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vohra and many other Congress leaders are out on bail in some case or other. By the way, Bail Gaadi stands for bullock cart in Hindi.

Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksy were some of the people who went absconding when vindictive Modi’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code created hurdles in their business of Con. With Cong(gress) out of business, the Con was not on anymore. We misunderstood him when Chidambaram asked, “How did Mallya escape? How did Nirav Modi escape? How did Mehul Choksy escape?” He wasn’t questioning the Modi government. Today, we understand he was just trying to gather some useful information that would come in handy during difficult times.

Vicious people are claiming, Karti Chidambaram has enough money to buy entire PoJK from Pakistan and can hand it over to Amit Shah if his father was allowed to go free. “That is so preposterous,” say some of the more knowledgeable people, “Karti can buy Bangladesh and Myanmar too and India can solve the Rohingyas and illegal immigrants’ problem once and forever.”

In the middle of all this muddle, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and general secretary Priyanka Vadra have expressed solidarity with P Chidambaram who went incommunicado for several hours. Both Rahul and Priyanka have declared that they stand with their man on the run. Entire Congress party is on the offensive against Modi government in support of P Chidambaram. In short, we can say, “The Con is on”.

The Media is a divided house today. Some of them are accusing Modi government of vendetta against Chidambaram. Some others feel vindicated after Chidambaram was denied bail. But all of them are happy for the TRPs. A former Union Minister has turned fugitive and the suspense thriller is turning out to be a blockbuster for the TV channels. “The din of Article 370 has been drowned by the Don of 420” is a delicious quip by some malicious characters branded as Bhakts. Social media has alerted the world about possible disguises Chidambaram could have taken to evade arrest. The FaceApp has finally been of some use for Indians after those ghastly old age photos displayed by nearly two thirds of world population. Did the CBI take cue from the detectives of social media? We will find out in future.

History is replete with stories of Mughals always having given shelter to fugitives. The tradition continued at 24, Akbar Road. The man who was absconding for over 24 hours re-surfaced at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Headquarters with his “esteemed lawyer colleagues” Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Kapil Sibal on either side. CBI finally nabbed Chidambaram at his home but not without enormous theatrics. While Congress party workers blocked the gates, CBI Officials scaled the compound wall to get to Chidambaram. Many people have claimed the Republic TV reporter and camera crew led the CBI team to Chidambaram, though we unfortunately have no authentic visual evidence to prove this.

Subramanian Swamy, the man behind Chidambaram in several corruption cases faced by the former Home Minister, is not overtly happy either. He gave due credit to former ED Officer and J Gopikrishnan, a journalist who did the expose on the INX Media case. He believes Chidambaram would have been in jail a lot earlier if an honest officer like Rajeshwar Singh wasn’t transferred in haste.

Not done with yet, Subramanian Swamy reminded people that the National Herald case comes up for hearing on August 31. He believes, Rahul and Priyanka have reasonably good chances of honouring their words. He is pretty confident the whole family can stand and even sit with P Chidambaram for long hours once the Court delivers the verdict. He didn’t elaborate on the “where” part though.

As the drama is expected to drag towards unpredictable climax on Janmashtami day, people are waiting curiously. Will P Chidambaram continue to live in Krishna Janmasthan after Janmashtami? Or will he add one more bail to his already burgeoning Bail Gaadi? The wait is on!

(The writer is a columnist and writes mostly on politics, cricket and cinema)