5 min readMay 17, 2026 06:58 AM IST First published on: May 17, 2026 at 06:58 AM ISTPrime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his unhappiness at a meeting with heads of Indian missions in Delhi last month. The PM felt that our ambassadors have not been sufficiently proactive in projecting the country’s positive image in the foreign media. They were also not always on the ball in alerting New Delhi of major changes in our neighbourhood. Dinesh Trivedi, the new political appointee ambassador in Bangladesh, was present when the PM pointedly remarked that anubhavi (experienced and knowledgeable) people should be selected for ambassadorial assignments.Modi perhaps had in mind US Ambassador to India Sergei Gor as a role model. Gor has certainly made his presence felt in New Delhi. Last week, Gor attended the swearing-in ceremony of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Guwahati and is leading the preparations at Bharat Mandapam, the government’s trade centre building, for a party for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Republic. Rubio is slated to visit India later this month. Gor has even hired 250 Delhi auto rickshaws to put up American flags and stickers to mark the US anniversary celebrations.AdvertisementSwitching Colours in BengalThe most extraordinary political turnaround after Mamata Banerjee’s defeat was of a Bengali daily owned by a businessman-lawyer known to be extremely close to Banerjee’s nephew, Abhishek Banerjee. The newspaper’s editor, in a signed piece, painted his periodical as a victim of Mamata’s tyranny and claimed that because it carried a photograph of the candlelight vigil of doctors during the R G Kar Hospital murder and rape case in 2024, all government advertisements were withdrawn. The overnight political switch in a section of the Bengali media following the BJP’s landslide victory in West Bengal is unabashed. During the Trinamool Congress’s long reign, Mamata was generous with government advertisements to the media, provided they toed her line. In fact, a national TV channel conveniently adopted contrary editorial positions in Kolkata and Delhi. Indicative of changing times is the fact that last week, at least five Kolkata newspapers carried prominently an article by Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Gujarat’s Somnath temple. In earlier times, the article would have most likely have been buried. In deference to the new reality, the Kolkata municipality which had for years painted traffic dividers blue and white, the colours of the Trinamool party, has now begun repainting them yellow and white. Even the CM’s secretariat which was illuminated blue and white at night has switched to saffron.Reel Life bested by RealityActor politician Joseph Vijay’s victory at the polls is dramatic, magical and as full of twists and turns as any of his blockbuster movies. The novice politician was described dismissively as a “weekend politician’’ with a party “built on a cardboard foundation’’. The actor addressed a minimal number of election rallies, sometimes bailing out on programmes at the last minute, while his rivals campaigned from morning to night. He was handicapped by three major scandals: his wife of 27 years sued for divorce; his partner, actress Trisha Krishnan, accompanied him in public; and he was held responsible by his rivals for a stampede at a political rally in Karur in which 41 people died. But nothing could lessen the voter’s ardour. Even the six-day wait before Governor Rajendra Arlekar agreed to swear in Vijay was as suspenseful as any movie climax. Vijay was a tantalising two votes short of the finishing line before he finally managed to persuade the VCK party to support him. But then the VCK leader had second thoughts, reportedly lured by the temptation that he could become king himself instead of Vijay. Udhayanidhi Stalin is said to have worked behind the scenes, using every trick in the trade to block Vijay from being sworn in as CM. He even proposed the unthinkable to the AIADMK, that its decades-long rival, the DMK, could offer it outside support. Udhayanidhi and Vijay started out as good friends and the DMK scion was the producer of Vijay’s Kuruvi in 2008. The story goes that Udhayanidhi initially encouraged Vijay’s political ambitions in the belief that he would eat into the AIADMK’s anti-incumbency vote, but by 2025, he realised his script had backfired. Some other melodramatic lines in this real-life script: Vijay’s mother, singer Shobha Chandrasekhar, in 2005 sang a ballad in a movie claiming prophetically, “If the poor decide, you become chief minister tomorrow.’’ (The song has been re-released with a re-mix.) Vijay’s much talked about movie, Jana Nayagan, yet to be cleared by the censors, has a scene showing the hero driving a car with the number plate TN CM 2026!