If Rahul Gandhi's Wayanad constituency visit was pretty much a part of being on the hard campaign trail, Priyanka Gandhi's trip had more nuances.
Priyanka too went the full distance like a seasoned politician, going hammer and tongs against the acts of commissions and omissions of the Narendra Modi government.
She came out with mighty powerful arguments, right from Mananthavady, through Pulpally, Areecode and Nilambur, as to why Congress-led UPA deserves to come to power.
She made scathing attacks, ripping into Narendra Modi and the NDA government for failing on multiple fronts.
Her impassioned pleas as to why the people of the country should vote for the Congress, which was trying to unify the country as against the divisive politics of the BJP, struck a chord.
But what turned out to be more endearing is the fact that Priyanka did not stop there but went that extra mile by giving a close sketch of her elder brother to the people of Wayanad.
And these vivid snap shots came as she used words to paint a reasonably candid thumbnail of an honest, sincere young man with no malice in his heart for even his staunch critics.
She described how he stood his ground, resolute in his determination to fight against inequality and injustice.
Priyanka spoke of that day when peace was shattered in their home for the first time -- when her grandmother was assassinated.
Rahul was 14 and Priyanka was 12, then. Seven years later came the biggest blow of all, their father's assassination. Rahul was 21 and studying at Harvard then, she reminisced.
Thereafter his only mission has been to work towards realising the unfulfilled dreams of their father.
Priyanka provided more glimpses about a man they would not have known otherwise – their candidate.
For the people of Wayanad, it was like getting to see Rahul, the man, up close and personal.
It all started off with a kind of preface to what was to follow, with Priyanka saying a portrait of Rahul that has been painted over the last decade or so is completely off the radar, far from the truth, by people who have no notion of the persona of Rahul Gandhi.
She said quite a few were lampooning, vilifying a character painted by his detractors as per their imagination, one that was farthest from the truth.
"He is a man ridiculed for courage, berated for his ideas...he is someone who is abused daily by his opponents, his education questioned, his martyred father is called a thief, his mother called names. And yet he has the courage and wisdom to stand up in Parliament, walk over to the other side and hug those who abused him," she said.
Earlier, Priyanka set the ball rolling by saying she wanted to put on record who the real Rahul was.
And she went on to provide brief snapshots of the 'real Rahul', as a kind of digression from the main text. But for many gathered at Mananthavady, the lines soon got blurred as the sub-text became the main narrative.
The crowd that braved the blazing sun and thronged the Valliyoorkavu temple ground in Mananthavady started connecting the moment she mentioned young MLAs across the country who would not have stood a chance before Rahul started democratising the Congress.
It struck a chord with the crowd as the process of selecting candidates who do not enjoy the patronage of those entrenched in the system has started becoming visible in Kerala too. The mass-connect moment came more in Areecode than in Mananthavady when she mentioned a shared passion – football. She needed to use only a few carefully chosen words to paint a portrait of an erudite man who is well versed with books of various religions.
She could not resist the taunt that he probably knew more on the Vedas and Upanishads than the self-proclaimed political custodians of Hinduism.
"He is passionate about soccer, a black-belt in Aikido, a qualified pilot, an instructor-level free diver who can reach 75 metres in the sea with a single breath, a mountaineer and passionate about travel," she said, before adding for good measure that Rahul was not going to like it very much that she shared all these personal details in public.
She also shared an in-flight incident during Karnataka Assembly poll campaign last year and how her brother remained calm while others panicked as the craft rapidly lost altitude.
Whatever may be Rahul's response to Priyanka's exposition of his lesser-known persona, the people of Wayanad have reason to connect better with their candidate now.
It matters little if it came out of candidness or strategic positioning. What matters is the difference it makes for the electorate on April 23.
The difference between voting for a candidate they barely know and one they now think is somewhat familiar to them.
A candid moment
Priyanka too had a candid moment in Nilambur when Rosy Immanuel Palamoottil who had shook hands with Rajiv Gandhi way back in 1987 when he visited the town came calling on her. Rosy initially tried to meet Rahul Gandhi when he visited Wandoor on April 17 after her "blast from the past" story got circulated on YouTube.
Later, it was picked up by local TV channels as she changed the narrative and said she wished to meet Priyanka. Priyanka was moved by Rosy's moment with her father and gave her a hug.
(Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist. He heads Rahul Gandhi's media cell in Wayanad.)