Note: This story was written for the web on June 7, when the Modi-Advani split came out in the open. With the wounds set to emerge deeper this time, we republish the article.

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It’s been an eventful Friday so far. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, the Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone-starrer, has become the fastest film to become a Rs 100-crore grosser; and LK Advani, the BJP patriarch, decided not to leave for Goa a day ahead of the crucial BJP national executive meet, due apparently to an upset stomach.

READ MORE: BJP exec meet: Advani not leaving for Goa today

The Congress was quick to seize the opportunity, taking a dig at Advani for apparently failing to come to terms with Narendra Modi’s jive at the Goa party. "If BJP leaders are falling ill because of Narendra Modi, then the BJP must think what impact Narendra Modi would have on the nation. My full sympathies with those BJP leaders who aren't well,” said Congress leader Rashid Alvi.

The reference, of course, was to Advani’s purported aversion to let the BJP declare the Gujarat chief minister as its prime ministerial candidate ahead of the next general elections.

Elsewhere, on social media, there were barbs aplenty for the BJP’s “perennial PM in waiting”. The reference, of course, was to Advani’s repeated attempts to get the party to project him as the PM candidate, the last being the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. To give him credit, at 85, Advani may not be eyeing the South Block office of the PM any longer but attempts to project an alternative, especially, at a time the main opposition party is split down the middle over the need and necessity to project Modi as the man to don the mantle, is not exactly complimentary for the man expected to be crowned at the Goa summit.

For a seasoned politician, Advani should have known better the moment he commended Modi’s Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his “humble” persona and “merits” as a leader. He should have known comparisons would be drawn immediately between the CMs of the two biggest BJP-ruled states. He should have known people would take sides, and force even him to take sides. That, however unwittingly, he would be deemed to have taken sides.

For, that’s politics, where drawing inference is the name of the game, and astute and seasoned players of the game – like Advani, and Modi and Chouhan themselves – do that day in and day out without falling in their own trap.

Any amount of repeating like a torn record that he did not mean what was being thrust upon him, and that the media and critics were quoting him out of context, is plain lazy and deliberately fuzzy logic.

From that background, his failure to fly to Goa would also be seen with meaning and import that could be a little far from the stomach bug that has apparently attacked Advani. It matters little what the BJP leaders say aloud, for most people, Advani is acting like a whining child who has been rapped on the knuckles. Or, for that matter, a sulking diabetic senior citizen denied his share of sweets.

At 85, Advani is way past his salad days as a politician. It’s time to play the senior statesman, a role which the competitive politician in the patriarch seemingly finds it hard to fit into. He may have built the party from scratch, but the superstructure is now being raised by the likes of Modi, Chouhan, Manohar Parrikar, Rajnath Singh, Raman Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and company. Advani should know how to pass the ball and let them play on.

Truth be told, no one likes to be served Hum Aapke Hain Koun in the age of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani – not the film per se, nor the gyaan, gaana and treatment in it – and the quicker Advani learns that and distances himself from the centre of the field, or the 70-mm screen space if you like, the better. Else he would be forcibly replaced. Electoral politics is a number game, and like the Yeh Jawaani generation of moviegoers have little patience for the sentiments of Hum Aapke or even Mother India for that matter, today’s politics and politicians in times of instant news and networking has little time for age and admiration.