Is it just me who is so utterly confused? Boggled is more like it. If you are not at least twice as much brighter, which isn’t saying much, I am sure you also do not know whom or what to press that button for in the next hour or two or seven in any of the sensitive booths all over our dear city. Sensitive is such a precious word we have. When goons maraud, and they always maraud never move or threaten, bombs get hurled, and they are always hurled never thrown or lobbed, and polling agents challenge, and they always challenge never heckle or cajole, we know it is a sensitive election that we are a part of. Now, this is a sensitive election, if there ever was one.
It must have preyed on many a sensitivity to have yesterday’s Trinimul mayor to become today’s Unnayan mayor wannabe, day before yesterday’s Congressman, who was not quite a Trinamul yesterday wanting to be our mayor for tomorrow and yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s restaurateur become today’s man of the masses. Possibly the next time we want daal, bhat, or inquilab, we are assured of our chamchams. I am not sure whether I should be voting the yesterday or today, though elections are all about our tomorrows. I don’t know about you, but my temporal sensitivities have gone awry.
Just like the development in the city, I am told. The whole point of this election, so the papers tell me and all I know comes from papers, is that not all parts of the city got the attention of the last civic body. It has been a south and south story all the way. I have been promised that dear old north where I live will no longer be neglected and all that the south part of the city has will be at my doorstep. So I need to give the other party a chance. I will, then, have all the neon and sodium malls, matchbox housing, coffee shops, multiplexes and dancing floors with swaggering youngsters in coloured hair that I have been dreaming about. There would not be a south and not be a north and we would all hurl, like the bombs near the booths, together merrily into development bliss. Barsati, my barber since when I was yon high, tells me all the stuff of my dreams are trouble and it would be fine if there would just be some more water and better roads. And yes, if that hospital that was torn down and was being built, the one where helicopters would land, would at least have a roof instead of stilts going up in the sky. It doesn’t look good. And all these years, it has been. Methinks, Barsati has a point. But then I have my dreams and at the end I am none the wiser which of those buttons I should be pressing.
In fact it was this pressing business that got my goat the other day. One of the young party workers in my area handed me the polling slip and said the first button on the machine was theirs. Now I have always known that I look a little daft, but to think that I would not know my hammer from my sickle and flowers from my hand or any such humdrum object was carrying this daft look thing on my face too far. I would think I am not the only one sensitive to things like others taking you for a daft. I instantly decided that come today there was no way this young party worker was going to get my vote since in any case the confusion is not yet clear whether things would be better if he got me to press one symbol instead of the other. But this daft thing seemed a pretty good guide to voting.
Or may be not. It is the name thing. I mean the nickname thing. Where you decide whom to vote because you think that Laltu in your experience of the world has always been a better sort than Khokon. I think this is as good as it gets. And the choices in any ward should be listed by nicknames because you know that Bablus are often the reading, writing sort as opposed to the Tutus who are known only to flex their muscles. In any case, would you want to vote for any candidate who was not self-respecting enough to have at least one endearing nickname? I am still not better off. In my neck of the neem woods there is but one chap with a nickname and he goes by Bokan, and what if he sweated the “n” away campaigning in this vile heat. I’ll settle for eenie meenie minny moe.
