Let's see.

Since school days Gujarat meant, the birth place of Mahatma Gandhi .Then in my teen years i associated Gujarat with garba dance and later in early 90's with cleanliness,when in our rented quarters at Ranchi ,flanked by Gujarati tenants and landlord ,conversation would often start with ,when we met in the after noons with them [house wife's]saying that they had just finished poncha [ mopping] and then end it ,reminding themselves aloud of the poncha that lay ahead of them [whether by themselves or to get their maid to do it] before the menfolk returned from work in the evening.
I would often hear water being splashed and the sounds of it being vigorously swept ,late at nights.The daily ritual of washing the kitchen after dinner and clearing up of the dirty dishes.

It was a sardarji colony and the sardaran'is would also start the day with the poncha , even in cold winter mornings.

In here [south] we wash the front entrance and steps every morning and draw kolam [rangoli]with rice flour. Poncha is only once or at the most twice a week.Washing of the kitchen at the end of the day's work in here was done by my mother ,as her generation religiously did , till she could and then left it in her later years .

I think women gain control over their dwellings only if they wield a broom and a mop and sweep and wash some part of it daily ,assuring their foot hold and dominance over a property that is actually not theirs. To the lord to whom the house belongs treats it as a inn --a resting place and the lady as its dutiful inn keeper.

From Gujarat i have side tracked into the subject of gender peculiarities.
What i intend to say is that i found Gujarati house wives, the one i happened to move with, obsessed with cleanliness, especially with mopping of their houses. It was so infectious that i too caught it [though my stay was only 3 years] and couldn't shake it off.

For several years there after my days invariably started with a poncha and ended with one in addition to the daily morning ritual of washing the entrance and decorating it with a kolam!

But of late , say for the past decade or so i have increasingly come to view Gujarat as 'Modi land'and Gandhi as well as the Gujarati's pushed to oblivion , thanks mainly due to the inde fatigable demonising ofSri Modi in the media and a diametrically opposite view in the Internet , the lavishing of praises at his governance and pinning of India's future on his shoulders.

Now i have to enter this state in order to visit Dwaraka --a divya deasm , one of the char dhams and one of the 7 mokshapuris. My first ever visit to this state.

Will i find Sri Modi stalking this region ,his rajyam menacingly , up and down whilst its population cowered in fear as media like us to believe or would it be a land of milk and honey , with gleaming roads and happy and prosperous people as the Internet would have me, believe?

Let's see ,what is in store.

PS.There i have gone and put myself in a tricky position. If i write as it is in Gujarat and if it is glowing ,the media and activists will glare angrily and if it is not then it would invite the harshest censure in the Internet world from bloggers and commentators.Only Dwarakadeesh can extricate me from my self imposed predicament.