Like many newspapers headlined the JD(U)’s split with BJP, and ergo the main opposition NDA, on Monday morning, protagonists in both parties are reacting exactly thus. Like bitter divorcees at the end of a 17-year-old marriage, raking up old wounds, going at each other with a suddenly rediscovered energy, vitality.

And going by the way Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy till Sunday, Sushil Modi, took turns to take barbs at each other, the marriage-divorce metaphor thought up by those news editors on an unusually hectic news-day on Sunday seems just the right expression.

Like a marriage rotting for years before the disconnect becomes evident, the discontent palpable, and the disgust unpalatable, before the couples decide to part ways Nitish Kumar explained the split didn’t come in a day. What happened in Goa – elevation of his self-proclaimed bête noire, his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi, to the post of party campaign manager for the 2014 elections – was only the last straw. The differences had been festering for months; even a year. And it was time the mask was taken off, Messrs N Kumar and S Modi said, though not in as many words, on Monday.

Look at the imagery used by Nitish Kumar while elaborating on why he severed ties with the BJP: “The moves being made in the BJP were tantamount to cheating us” (adultery by one of the partners?) and “We have worked together to do some good work and that should be remembered” (oh yes, we did have some good, quiet times together, you see!)

...And that by Sushil Modi: “The way BJP MLAs were dismissed yesterday was very insulting, this was not expected from Nitish Kumar (separation hurts, right?), and “Instead of asking for our resignation, they dismissed us and announced it through the media; this is very painful” (ahem, well…)

Speaking to reporters in Patna on Monday morning, Nitish said: “We tried to put our views forward for a year but the BJP didn’t pay heed. This decision was not taken in a hurry but after a lot of deliberations. If there is talk of betrayal, it is the BJP – look at how they have treated their elders in the party. The Atal-Advani era in the BJP is over.”

That’s true, to a large extent. While the Bihar CM sure was making intermittent noise about his opposition to Modi over the last few months as the clamour for “Modi for PM” within the BJP took on gigantic proportions and rose from being mere noise to a decibel level unto itself, BJP’s “treatment” of its elders is hardly a believable reason for a political party to snap ties with an alliance partner. There are issues Nitish is not raking up that Sushil Modi and Lalu Prasad have, and they are about the Bihar CM’s own ambition and loyalty.

While Sushil Modi, stung by the sudden ‘divorce’, has released to the media a video tape that shows Nitish purportedly praising Narendra Modi in 2003 (a year after the Gujarat riots), Lalu has opened his own old wounds, recalling how Nitish deserted him to start courting with the BJP.

These are issues the Bihar CM has to deal with sooner rather than later. Because when a bad marriage ends in a messy divorce leading to court proceedings, a lot of muck is raised by either party in court. In Indian political parlance, that is the people’s court.

Nitish Kumar’s clean, good administrator image might take a hit as the muck starts stacking up and partially reveal a well-concealed “political opportunist” image that Lalu dared mock at in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper (read it here).