The Dot Boomers

On stage, he politely demurred when Shashi Tharoor, chairman of the jury, described him as a digital pioneer.

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora

Top Shot (from left) Akshay Raheja, Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Tharoor, L.K. Advani and Pratibha Advani.

But when Lal Krishna Advani wrote his first blog post in January 2009, at age 82, there were not many politicians venturing towards this brave and risky new world. He was “technology-agnostic”, he wrote then, but eager to embrace any mode of communication that held out promise.

Say cheese Randeep hooda, Saina Nehwal take a selfie

For a politician who was steeped in the classic old world of print, having assisted K.R. Malkani at Organiser back in the sixties, it may seem counter-intuitive that four decades later he would be transitioning so effortlessly to the digital world, with his own portal and a signature blog. And looking back from 2016, it’s clear that it was still a nascent world, with Facebook and Twitter in their infancy. But then, the veteran BJP leader was perhaps the first politician to shun a paper diary for a digital one to organise his schedule.

On the wall L.K. Advani signs the twitter Mirror

His presence as the chief guest at the Lloyd-Outlook Social Media (OSM) Awards, therefore, was in the fitness of things. This was the first ever such initiative in India to recognise and honour those using the social media as a powerful tool—people from fields as diverse as politics, cinema, public service, sports, journalism, food and travel. And here was an eminence grise, a year short of being a nonagenarian, very much a comrade-in-arms with all those frontiers people.