PG. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle may have been overrun with impostors as other houses are with mice, but it would have taken a quantum leap of faith to slot Atal Behari Vajpayee in that category. Yet, that's exactly how it seems as the prime minister begins his campaign for the '99 Lok Sabha elections. Gone is the poet-politician of the significant pause, the extravagant flourish. In place of the impish charm, there's unmitigated gravitas. The underlying joie de vivre has given way to a minimalist,almost machiavellian,approach of doing what it takes to win the polls. And if that means using,figuratively, at the very least,the imagery of war and the deaths of those in uniform in the icy barrenness of Kargil, so be it.