Kids want a saviour, don’t need a fake / We’re gonna rock to the rules that I make / I wanna be elected, elected, elected. 70s rocker,Alice Cooper.
Elections for various state assemblies in our country have just been done and dusted, barring the 2nd phase voting in Bengal. We are still waiting for the dust to settle. In a few weeks from now, the results will be announced, sweets freely distributed, firecrackers bursting at every street corner, accusations of chicanery and booth capturing will be hurled by the defeated parties at the winning party or alliance and the Election Commission. Much brouhaha will be made of the alleged SIR rannygazoo, and the EVMs will come in for more brickbats. This is par for the course. The election cacophony has been in the air for some months now and gaining momentum and decibel level with each passing day. Although not as humongous a task as conducting a countrywide general election, it is humongous enough to be getting along with. The greatly put upon Election Commission has had to oversee elections in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, West Bengal and Keralam. I find that ‘m’ quite superfluous and irksome for the last named. Even Microsoft Word shows its disapproval with a red, squiggly line under the name. The strapline, Keralam. God’s Own Country does not have quite the same ring as Kerala. God’s Own Country. Anyhow, ours not to reason why.
Getting back to the elections, there must be excellent reasons why elections in our country are always held in the peak of summer. I am yet to come across a satisfactory answer from those in the know of these things as to the thinking behind this extraordinarily daft timing. As it is temperatures among political parties and their myriad supporters are running sky high. Add to this the impossibly high mercury levels obtaining all over the country, and you have to wonder what prompts our political leaders to risk heat stroke, dehydration and sheer fatigue as they go about their thankless task. Not entirely thankless to those who come out on the winning side, of course. To say nothing of the millions of voters standing in long queues with their tongues hanging out. The Prime Minister had to keep changing hand towels during his speeches to massive crowds in Bengal. The man was literally earning his stripes by the sweat of his brow. After all this, whether he will be deified or Didi-fied in Bengal remains to be seen.
It is also a given that it is virtually impossible, under such trying circumstances, to expect our leaders to display a modicum of understated wit, sarcasm and irony during their campaigning. A Shashi Tharoor might be able to pull it off, provided he speaks in English, but nobody amongst the hoi polloi will follow a word of what he is saying. It’s a good job the suave politician from Keralam (that unsightly ‘m’ again!) is pretty fluent in his mother tongue, the palindromic Malayalam, and gives as good as he gets in the vernacular. Some years ago, when fellow Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar campaigned in Mayiladuthurai, he did more than a fair job letting fly in Tamil, though he too is far more comfortable, not to mention eloquent, with the Queen’s (or King’s) English. These days, Aiyar’s party keeps him at a less-than-discreet arm’s length, but that has not dimmed the veteran’s weekly oratorical and journalistic sparkle on YouTube and in print.
For most of us who cast our votes and come home to follow the electoral process, observing happenings on television is as much a matter of considerable interest as it is a platform for unlimited, at times morbid, entertainment. God knows we have had our fill of Donald Trump and his shenanigans, and those sixes and fours galore at the interminable IPL is getting to be quite a drag. It is now time to watch our television anchors and their team of special guest speakers giving us the benefit of their views on what is likely to happen post the tiresome and tiring, aam janta’s exercise of their franchise. While we await the actual results, our television channels will keep us glued to our sets with their exit poll predictions, post which we will be dealt the Real McCoy, the actual results. Their teams will consist of psephologists and astrologers apart from the usual suspects of know-alls sympathetic to one political persuasion or the other. We, the chattering class, will avidly soak it all up.
That said, it is instructive to reflect on how the various parties approached households like mine to canvas for votes. A typical preliminary pourparler from a party whose name it will be superfluous to mention, will go something like this. The doorbell rings, you open the door and are greeted by a saffron, kurta clad gentleman with the familiar salutation, ‘Jai Shri Ram Ji Ki.’ At which point you can either slam the door in his face or extend a warm welcome, depending entirely on which side of the political binary you come down on.
In Calcutta, as it then was eons ago, you open the door during election time at your own peril. While you hold the door slightly ajar, it will be brusquely pushed open wide and four or five ruffians waving crimson flags, will extend a donation book with counterfoils in which a pre-determined figure would have already been pencilled in. Usually not less than Rs.500/-. When you look at them aghast and sputter incomprehensibly, they will turn menacing and issue dark threats should you step out of your home and hearth. Discretion being the better part of valour, you meekly cough up. It is the same strategy the hoodlums adopted when demanding ‘Pujo chanda’, donations for Durga Puja celebrations at the local ‘para.’ Whether such a situation still obtains in Didi’s state or not, I am unable to confirm. It’s over 25 years since I left Amar Sonar Bangla.
In Tamil Nadu, a state my ancestors ‘hail’ from, the current practice appears to be far more practical. Households are swamped with kitchen appliances like pressure cookers, microwave ovens, refrigerators and the like. Dollops of cash are also generously distributed. All the parties indulge in this limitless munificence, and since all of them are dressed in spotless, Surf Excelled white ‘veshtis,’ half-sleeve cotton shirts and ‘angavastarams,’ the beneficiaries of all this generosity, namely the voters cannot possibly distinguish one party worker from the other and will ultimately vote for whichever party takes their fancy – quite possibly a dashing celluloid hero of their dreams. Film stars enjoy a very special position in the hearts of a majority of Tamilians. In this glib assessment, I include Puducherry or Pondicherry as it once was, as this Union Territory is but an adjunct of Tamil Nadu and the people and their proclivities don’t change.
Keralam (there I go again) is a bit of a closed book to me when it comes to what it takes to woo voters. The state has, ever since I can recall, enjoyed the status of being ‘the most literate state’ in the country. Under the circumstances, one will have to assume the populace here will not be easily swayed by pressure cookers and empty promises. They know what they want and more pertinently they know what they don’t want. That being the case, irrespective of which party ascends the throne, the common man will retire to a nearby watering hole and avail himself of a large tot of brandy accompanied by a plate of fried mussels, clams and prawns. And for all I know, Shashi Tharoor might actually join them in the repast. For the nonce, the politically astute Tharoor is writing paeans of poetic praise to fellow Kearalamite Sanju Samson, in honour of the newly recruited CSK hero’s brilliant exploits in Chepauk and elsewhere. Every little bit helps.
Finally, I make no comment on Assam because I have never been there and know so little about the hilly state. Close relations of mine worked in well-known oil companies there, but that does not appear to have done much good for our limited stock of the golden liquid, now that the Strait of Hormuz has become a sea of madness. Himanta Biswa Sarma seems set for another term as Chief Minister, the only state where the experts are in no doubt as to the likely outcome.
I shall now retire and anticipate, with bated breath, the dubious joys of switching channels while Arnab, Navika, Anand, Rahul (both of them), Zaka and their myriad guests go hammer and tongs at each other over all the minutiae that passes for the great Indian electoral process. And if that begins to pall, I shall move on to YouTube and revel in the worldly wisdom of Karan, Prannoy, Barkha and a host of vernacular experts, many of whom seem to have the pulse on what is really happening out there. So, get that bag of popcorn or the much-publicised ‘jhalmuri’ out with a bottle of beer, or if you are abstemious, a can of American Coke or Pepsi will do just fine. As a pal of mine said, ‘I hate Donald Trump’s guts, but I will have my Diet Coke.’ Happy viewing.
Suresh's Corner 