Af­ter a resched­uled semi­fi­nal at the So­cadrome on Fri­day night, Ravi Lakhan emerged as the win­ner of that round of the King of Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion.

There are mo­ments in a coun­try’s life when a sin­gle fig­ure be­comes more than suc­cess­ful, more than fa­mous, more than dom­i­nant. They be­come a ref­er­ence point—a con­stant that helps de­fine ...