Journey to the Center of the Vote

“‘Urdu school..gav ke beech mein hi he’ that’s what he said” quoted my mom. Not exactly aware of what it meant I nodded my head, after all it was only quarter to seven and even the sun had barely woken up. This morning was a little different from others, and in all possibility there would not be another one like this in next 5 years.

It was the polling day and rarely had I seen my mother so fired up to head out of the home at 7 am. She had barely stepped out of our 2 BHK apartment in the last 4 months. Today she was ready with a hand drawn map of the polling centre and the page numbers where our names would appear on the polling list. “I have taken it from the net” she said and it was clear the only thing stopping her from dashing out to cast her vote was my semi conscious state. I pulled myself together in about 10 minutes in a desperate attempt to not be the limiting factor.

Since my mom is averse to sitting on a bike and my competency with the four wheelers is such that it is converted into an obstruction magnet with my mere touch, we chose to walk. It was a good 2 kilometers away from our place and de facto topic of discussion was election. I could understand her eagerness. We had been expatriates for a good part of last two decades and this time the politicians had spent astronomical amounts to convince to people to vote (for them). There was another major factor pulling people like my mom- the marriage of social activism and politics. Never before had voting seemed so relevant and voter so empowered. The events in the Delhi and Karnataka State poll highlighted the fact what Goliaths could be bought down and accountability did matter. There was a strong social aura to the politics that had become diluted since the time of independence. All said, the party responsible for the political purge in India seemed to descend to populist rhetoric and many a times nearly indistinguishable from anarchist.

Despite all the above said reasons I was woefully unaware of what my constituency is, let alone who were the contestants. So, the dilemma of whether I should vote for the candidate or the party got snipped up from its very bud. Independents were usually reduced to an item in the shopping list for horse trading, voting for them seemed a pointless exercise and hence it was the only filter I had. When we had finally reached the booth, I still had not made up my mind but the same can’t be said of my mother. She had known whom she would vote for quite some time. There was a strange sense of satisfaction brimming while we were in the queue. The snapshot of 50 odd people who stood in the line waiting renewed my faith in the democracy. It was slow, tedious and not lacking in faults but held a promise of better days. 

It was almost our turn. Before the officer even had chance to read out the full name, my mom said with the pedantic pulse of physics teacher she once was “Page 46 aur 62 mein dekho ”. Within the next two minutes we were done. The ink on my left hand index finger had already dried by the time I cast my vote .The high pitched sound of the ballot signaled us to move along. We better do it, there was a 2 kilometer walk before sun took the earth seriously.