The spiralling election fever amid Kerala currently witnessing an unfamiliar rise in the mercury forms a suitable electoral backdrop for the Congress and the Left slugging it out amid an unconcealed personal targeting of its top leaders, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and CM Pinarayi Vijayan. This could be unfamiliar, and a bit unnerving for Delhi-based theoreticians who bake “secular unity” from the comforts of political cubicles, remotely cut off from the realities of cold-blooded calculations and gladiator wars on the ground to rake in numbers for the Dilli durbar.