Now showing: Legend of Kalidas starring Mulayam and Akhilesh

One could but draw a parallel between the current saga of the Samajwadi Party - with its supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in the self-destruction mode - and the legend of Kalidas. Folklore has it that Kalidas was sitting on the wrong side of a tree's branch and sawing it. When he was done, the branch and he inevitably fell on the ground. This tale is often used to enunciate that one is hell-bent on the path of self-destruction.

But this is where the comparison with the SP supremo ends. Kalidas went on to become one of India's greatest literary icons, but Mulayam Singh Yadav - despite the thud with which he landed after sawing the branch he was sitting on- is now busy cutting the roots of the very tree that created him and brought him to power in 2012.

The SP saga is so befuddling, so byzantine that it has put the best of analytical minds in a fix. Though there have been several explanations, none can explain the mystery of a loving, yet often critical father turning into an enemy who is now willing to burn the house down just to put son Akhilesh in his place.

Had this happened a couple of years ago, the party would have called it the churning of political aspirations. With elections round the corner, the SP cadres are calling it suicide.

Three to four days ago, UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, in an interview to an English daily, had said that he may be sidelined but cannot be defeated. He said that going by the current scenario in the party, it looks like he may have to begin campaigning all alone. He went on to say he is used to fighting alone thanks to his boarding school days.

This interview was the rant of a chief minister who has been outsmarted and outwitted by none other than his own father in a well-executed script, with his Chacha playing the lead role and Uncle Amar a cameo.

But if the CM thought that his wailings might tug at the strings of his father's heart, he was in for a rude shock. A day after this interview, SP supremo Mulayam held a press conference and poured cold water on those harbouring a reconciliation between the father and the son. Mulayam Singh Yadav gave ample indication that forget reconciliation, his son Akhilesh Yadav won't even be the party's next CM candidate.

He said, "The newly elected legislators will elect their leader."

Quizzed further by journalists about the face of the SP, Mulayam said that the last election was fought on his name and it was he who handed over the mantle to Akhilesh.

It was clear that the SP supremo would have no more of anybody questioning his supremacy in the party. But many in the party believe that Mulayam Singh has been misled by the wily duo of Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh and is unable to see things clearly under their influence.

An Akhilesh loyalist said that veterans in the party are forgetting that it was the clean image of Akhilesh and his hard work that acted as a catalyst in the party's stupendous performance in 2012. The UP CM was the mascot of the "changed" Samajwadi Party for whom every segment of the society voted. "Look at the surveys that were coming just five months ahead of elections. Samajwadi Party was number 1 in all of them. You think this happened because of Shivpalji? And doing all this palace intrigues just before election is nothing but sabotaging the government. Sadly Netaji is not able to see this."

"Whether we liked it or not but SP rule was synonymous with Law and order problem. Akhilesh's rule changed that perception to a greater degree. Its heartbreaking to see all this going down the drain just 4-5 months before the election," weighed in another SP leader.

Though the Shivpal Yadav camp is very happy with the turn of events, even it acknowledges that this public bickering of the Yadav Parivar will have an adverse impact on the party's election prospects.

A senior SP leader said that Akhilesh had become too big for his boots: "I can understand him defying Shivpalji, but of late, he had begun defying Netaji too. He took a hard position during the QED episode and all this public defiance didn't go down well with him. Amidst this, we are going to lose an election badly - one we were all set to win."

Samajwadi Party's election campaign was expected to start in September, but Mulayam Singh has now announced that it will kick off on November 5 - the same day BJP starts its Parivartan Yatra from Saharanpur.

Netaji, as Mulayam is fondly called, is confident of a repeat of 2012 in Uttar Pradesh. Sadly, his own party believes otherwise.