My father returned to America this weekend after my parents' annual three-month visit. He's a retired doctor in his mid-80s, with a failing memory that often leaves him confused and frightened by his surroundings. He walks slowly, almost tip-toeing. His hobbies are to eat (he's lucky my mother cooks well) and to sleep. He's not big on reading. TV news used to hold him in thrall but now seems incoherent. He loved films but now focuses on the popcorn; he is probably unable to connect a narrative's dots, particularly as it flies by in pictures on a giant screen. However, despite my informed advice and relentless presentation of facts, he remains a true NRI in that he is a bhakt of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a result, our arguments for years resembled those that you read about in a Dostoevsky novel (except my father is no cruel and reckless patriarch, of course). The last two years I have stopped arguing, simply because facts do not seem to matter to bhakts, no matter how educated. Also, I find that talking politics these days is depressing – people generally seem to have no time for decency or debate or even just a polite exchange of views; it is all scorched-earth battles nowadays. Whenever my back is turned, or I'm running an errand (or busy writing) I'm told that my father goes into rapture about Modi. It has nothing to do with Modi's policies or failure of governance or his supposed incorruptibility. It is simply because Modi stands up for the "average, decent" Hindu like my father.