The fortunes of her underlings in the Congress, it appears, are to be decided by the conjunctions in the skies of Europe on the night of December 9 in a distant year when the gora sahibs still had the run of the subcontinent and the brandy-pawnee was flowing like, well, pawnee. The sun was moving into Taurus, the Moon, paradoxically, into Virgo, and Arcturus and Rigel meandered in the general direction of Barnard's Star.

A rash of bicycle thieves was predicted in postwar Italy. In almost-independent India, widespread gout among colonels was foretold. The world was cooling off, in preparation of a nuclear winter that never came. But in far-flung cantonments, it did aggravate the gout.

Now, the Congress is pinning its hopes on an astral conjunction from long ago and faraway. It is a sobering comment on both the state of the party and that of the political establishment at large. The latter is, of course, positively ridden with superstition, so it is a bit unfair to single Sonia or the Congress out for derision.

Down South, a myriad coconuts are martyred in the driveway of Poes Garden as Amma's cavalcade hits the campaign trail. Auspicious limes, too, are cruelly crushed beneath her conquering wheels. In comparison, the northern Madam getting her horoscope made is totally boring. But it is cause for serious concern. Here we have an organisation that its principal apologist brands as the ``oldest party in India''. Its hopes are pinned on a single personality for reasons that are little better than genealogical.

And these hopes rest principally on her natal chart. But is it just the Congress' fault that things have come to such a fatalistic pass? No, indeed. This is one of those rare elections where all things are equal. Ideology has lost primacy to percentage points. Theleading formations look increasingly like each other. The number of issues that can be profitably milked are alarmingly low. Facing an electorate that has always voted emotionally without any truly emotive issues at hand is a daunting prospect.

Right now, every little helps. Even the phases of the moon. Even the attitude of distant Castor and Pollux. The contents of Madam's horoscope listed earlier are of course a vicious fantasy intended to jangle centrist brains. But the real thing is no less stranger, no less irrelevant. The battle that is to come shall be lost and won not by the inexact science of astrology but by the equivocatory art of statistics.

The acuity of noses shall be more decisive than the fate line on the Congress' symbol. But over the years, the party has been losing the people who can smell victory and disaster the people with their noses closest to the ground. In their absence, it must roll the dice, spin the wheel, play the numbers. For the Congress, Pascal would be a more appropriateguiding star than Sirius.