A Still More Farcical Circus

10

                            A Still More Farcical Circus

The honeycomb of political pall-mall had been stoned suddenly, thus igniting a buzzing hubbub in its full treachery. Elections for the state assembly were announced. Atmospherics were very soon dominated by the politicised hubble-bubble. Politics became the favourite past time of almost each and everybody in the village.

The congress candidate cut a very sorry figure. Right from the start odds were heavily stacked against him. After all the mother of all parties (and of all politics---good or bad) was fighting against its perpetually fading aura, as the eyes blinded with its sheen and before-independence idealism now saw the reality glaring out of that hazy, embezzled, cheated past. Its identity as the mightiest upkeeper of the interests of all castes, creeds, religions and classes had been severely dented; for there were political offsprings who were by now mature enough to immodestly shove the mother and claim their regional share from the Congress cake of yore.

Pathetically brooding in synchronism with his party’s soul, the Congress candidate had even the local election history stacked against him. Since the formation of this state, the Congress had managed to win only once from this constituency. Majority of the farmers, who constituted a deciding chunk of votes, spurned it like a harlot whose modesty had been repeatedly violated by the low, begging classes. While bearing all ill-humour and taunts like ‘the silly sons and daughters of Indira mai’ the Harijans were valiantly voting for it as a form of duty ever since the right to vote was bestowed upon them. But it had been beyond the capacity of the Congress to bring even a semblance of change in the status of its poor, low caste followers.

The Congress-led governments in the state mostly headed by its ‘stalwart of corruption’ had set up higher and higher watermarks of corruption; so much so that its symbol ‘the hand’ appeared more of a claw of that ‘pernicious pimp of corruption’ who plundered the state machinery to the extent that the creaking wheels of this young state had all the mourning clatter of dragging it into the badlands of lawlessness and backwardness. But thank God, that wasn’t to be! Because the hardworking people kept on dragging the ungreased wheels and their almost unpaid hardwork ensured that the state still kept on moving ahead; ever trying to come out of those ruts of corruption he had so firmly etched out on its marching path. Other government heads---less corrupt---followed that master trickster.

So, such was the political sand our Congressman was left to rake in. Fully sure that every low caste, famished fellow was born with the tag of ‘Congresswallah’ with his/her patron saint Indira mai   (just because of that slogan ‘garibi hatao’) this Congress candidate (like the archaic times) wooed people cramped in these dirty, crumbling and garbaged neighbourhoods.  

An ex-wrestler, a local strongman in fact, followed by his hundred cronies was plopping at each and every foot in the village, breaking all caste and class barriers. He was contesting as an independent candidate. Brawny son-of-the-soil’s campaign jeeps blared out patriotic songs, meanwhile.

One of the parties had given the contesting ticket to a person whose name bore the same surname as that of the villagers. So, a horde of old men from different villages bearing the same surname gathered in the village chaupal to provoke a feeling of unity and brotherhood for the sake of respected name-entailer. The venue had been chosen because the constituency derived its name from that of the village.

A nationally emerging Hindu rightist party got this constituency for contesting the elections, in its miniscule coalition share with the party in power in the state assembly. The Chief Minister himself dashed down to the district city to file the nomination papers of this candidate. Several thousand farmers with flags and placards on their tractors bumbled along the bumpy road to have a soul-satisfying look at the charismatic leader, whom they last saw five years ago while campaigning for the previous elections. Due to the rallyists’ enravishment the city witnessed a deadlocking traffic jam. And when they returned after listening to the frescoed speech they preyed upon the tattered public as well as private transport without paying a penny; farcing away the wretched request of the conductor by saying that the Chief Minister will be paying for his voters. Hawkers and vendors bore the severest burn as the fleeing mobbists consumptively looted whatever the poor fellows had at their behest. Established shopkeepers of the trading community, apprehending the trouble beforehand, had kept their shutters down since morning. But the poor loitering vendors and hawkers, who dug a well daily to quench their thirst, had no option but to come out on business and hence were penalised for the same.

Every sort of dissertation came to be hijacked by the political overtones: youths for employment, olds for increased pension, farmers for free electricity and water. Hence, quite inevitably the village was left segmented on political lines.  It is really wonderful how and why people go on squirting endless words during the election time and then forget the elected elite for five years, giving them ample time and opportunity to plunder the resources in their capacity as the people’s representatives. To further proliferate this political carnival, jeeps laden with flags and posters entered the village streets and the loudspeakers full-throatily barked about irreconcilable manifestoes. In pursuance of their soaring aspirations and excitement people masted tall flags on their roofs, as if it was meant to reach God, praying for its candidate’s victory.

Inhaling long breathes of the politicised air, children ran after the campaigning vehicles asking for flags, pamphlets, posters and tiny plastic tabs bearing the election symbols. As their prerogative right to a churlish childhood they would put poster or flag of any party on their houses, thus putting the elders in a cauldron of utter embarrassment as they returned after a diehard campaigning throughout the day against the very same candidate.

The tricky villagers taking a cue from the book of politics were using electricity directly from the power lines, thus bypassing the measuring meters. Sure of the administrative pallor-–dub it as the deliberate laxity to appease the disgruntled masses due to the negligence of the last five years-–people were cutting wood from the public property along the district road without caring about the existence of some funny thing called the district forest department. Many were taking frivolous quantities of sugar, kerosene and fertilizers from the public distribution system. Loan payments had been suspended or postponed by the people themselves. State government officials did an about turn from their responsibilities in the offices, damn sure of no departmental enquiry or action as it was the carnival time of electioneering. All in all it seemed a ghastly deal in its full slovenliness between the voters and the politicians, which permitted the former to plunder whatever possible in their capacity as the state subjects during this one month before the final day of judgment and then permit the latter to do the same in their capacity as the beholders of all rights for five long years; rubbish plunder by so many for such a short  period of time giving the sovereign right of endless embezzlement for five long years by so few. After that same story was to be repeated.

People of the village who didn’t find anything to while away their time joined the conglomerating lores of campaigning vehicles, whose windows opened so invitingly; a free ride throughout a noisy day and after that relaxing cheap drinks, that was all on offer. What a way to win the people’s hearts! The wrestler candidate’s campaigning vehicles had become notoriously pleasing in this matter. These were almost mobile wine outlets with a gruesome and willful political aura about them, which was constantly kept on tenterhooks by loudly-lurid folksongs in the native dialect, eulogising his exploits in the sport and urging the young and dashing brigade to join the cavalcade.

One day a contestant was speaking in an ameliorative voice, “Look! I’ve no extra source of income. I’m just a small farmer like you; do agricultural chores myself. In the morning before starting out for the campaign, I put fodder before the cattle... milk them,” with consummate ease he went on describing the mundane activities of a farmer’s hard life, which instantaneously whetted the gatherers’ sympathy for him. They hailed him as the immortal son of the same soil. What mattered most was the fact that he looked like a crude, faded and dusted jade like most of the hardworking fellows in his audience. When they came back after listening to the speech, most of them were cramming the same activities like school going children.

The electioneering time forced the electricity board to continue the supply even while it was raining with strong winds. Earlier-–at least not during the present term of the assembly-–not a single person in the village had witnessed the divine synchronism between the cloud’s lightning and a bulb’s. After all, bad weather was the first and foremost pretext for jamming the supply. But this lucky night the rain drops fell happily in a dimly lit corner of the street where an odd bulb dangling under protective plate from the electricity pole valiantly fought the dark for the sake of this Godsent opportunity.

Wife and sister of a candidate were campaigning with supreme humility. They touched each and every foot that came their way, forcing a blessing upon their heads for the win of the dear family member. When dithering women walked away from them, they just squeezed the poor ladies in an imperiously holistic embrace as if to force down an oath for casting the vote in their favour only.

In an effort to appease the ever-fastidious voters, the political completists were leaving no stone unturned. So the other day an influential minister in the state cabinet was coming to address a rally at the tehsil town where the monkeys had been dumped. Kaleidoscopic splatter of his impending visit was spraying all vibrant colours for the last week. And on the appointed day when he reached the sleepy township-–a mere indiscernible spot on his rollicking trajectory-–late by four full hours, the waiting thousands went berserk at the mesmerising political translucence surrounding him. He stopped there for just ten or fifteen minutes, and during this hasty time he threw puny pebbles and epitaphic strictures at the opposition in a perniciously inflammatory voice. His serrated dirge dedicated to his foes sprayed an unexplained cosmic charm in its full inexhaustibility.

When the political alchemist was leaving the stage in indomitable spirits, people bequeathed seven lakh rupees as their humble contribution to his campaigning cost. A hoary, big farmer from the village-–an aspiring grassroots politician himself-–put a notes’ garland worth 50000 rupees around the leader’s neck, as the hero chugged along a sure shot political bulwark amidst the rain of money. It maybe noted that he was the same farmer who’d jinx like a damp squib when it came to paying the paltry wage to a migrant Bihari labourer in his fields. Twiddling his fingers and ‘lack-a-day’ look over his face, he’d wryly say: “Where’s the money, son? I’ll give your 50 rupees, after I get it checked from my bank account whether such a money is left in it or not.” But here, the prospect of having a political clout, read it a direct reach to the Chief Minister’s office, prompted him to brandish the cosy splendour of his money.

As for the strongman, the independent candidate, he successfully swayed a commoner’s political psyche with his power, catchy slogans and of course two crore rupees spent during the month. Most of it had been directly spent to buy votes. They would approach the most influential member of a caste, community or locality in every village, offer him anything in the range of 25-30 thousand rupees, brawnily admonishing him to distribute it among the voters and get an avowed promise of stamping on his election symbol only. “Don’t consider that we won’t come to know how many votes we have counted from your wards,” they helplessly tilted to their normal intransigent selves, despite desperately trying to maintain a political equanimity. So it was not that once having accepted his doles people could cheat him by voting for another candidate. They knew exactly well that he’d plunder back all the money (with interest) if he lost, and if he got elected he’d, as someone said jokingly, ‘force them to garland him with strings of notes (amounting to principal plus interest of course) when he will come celebrating his win’.

In this way the local strongman with his ever-convalescing predacity to aggression had become an edgy sore in the eyes of the Chief Minister whose allied candidate of the rightist nationalist party-–which was rising in the state by aligning with anyone and then dumping it for more greener pastures-–seemed to lose his intransigent wits in the face of these strong political solos performed by the ex-wrestler.

The rightist candidate in his pathetic lackluster look borne by his dull features always seemed a trailer in the campaign race. He wasn’t well acquainted with the pulse of the countryside politics, so his demurred speeches made of abstract and disjointed phrases picked out of the party’s nationwide manifesto, singing in a lofty choir for the Hindu pride, found little or no juxtaposition with the rustic psyches, because here was no Muslim fodder available to be devoured. His only trump card was that he was almost a proxy candidate of the state Chief Minister whose gerrymandering skill was the only hope for the candidate. So those who rallied behind Bhai Ram Ratan, literally meaning the jewel of Lord Rama, did it for the sake of the state’s head minister.

The villagers as priceless voters adopted such politically correct double standards that nobody could tell–-like the mysterious last thought before death–-who was going to vote for whom. Even the family members doubted each other’s real intention. What an environment of spying, conjectures and interpretations it had become!

A few hundred people from the village, in full political eclecticism, were campaigning day in and night out in the hope of getting a job or at least a political friendship. So all in all there were about a lakh such diehardly triadic servers of democracy in all the 54 villages of the constituency. What could a poor MLA do for such a plethora of people even if by chance he got some presumption about the task at hand? Thus hopes and aspirations were to be shattered and their archaic search for a political podium was to continue years after years, while the abhorrent weeds and pervertive perjuries in the political spittoon were to degenerate beyond bearable limit.

Sturdy and gutsy young boys, who’d nothing else to do, became choiring minstrels in this chequered playlet. Their immature, inexperienced moral selves in their utterly unpalatable lambency made them innate puppets to be made to perform a political dance by the skillful fingers. Seeing this devil’s baptism by fire, it came really to be doubted if an honest and good person could even dare to contest an election, what to talk of winning it! Maybe in its obsolescence democracy is growing too big for its boots during these evil times, because this greatest form of governance is perhaps only fit for cent-percent good times; and when it comes to the present times-–when the evil’s headcount is a whooping seventy-five percent---it falls on its farcical obverse.

A woman from the village was hyperactively participating in the elections. They said she’d slovenly fallen many times in her life. Divorced, she’d slept with migrant Bihari labourers-–ten at a time for your information please-–employed at her mushroom huts in the privacy of fields. As a nurse she’d riotously mated with doctors, compounders and even with patients on the death bed. Of late she was seen wandering with the contesting candidates. People were damn sure that she supplied nuggety young, unsuspecting girls for the politicians’ night campaigns. She would fleece them from the all girl’s college at the district city and mostly her coercion was successful in getting a politician’s bed warm with the freshly juicy thing. Going by the trends, if she kept on following at the pinhead of same colourful riveting–-a genial cog in the scheme of political nature with her qualification, experience and specialization-–it could be very well expected that one day she’ll get a contesting ticket, most possibly win the election and be addressed as venerable “Madam!” After all she was no sinner; just a woman consumptively engaged in the mundane carnival of life during these evil times. Bravado democracy of the times! Kudos to thee for assimilating each and every one of us in thy alluring and patronising arms! Thanks for giving infinite outlets to the basest and worst of our desires!

George Bernard Shaw said, “An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.”

Moral horror it was indeed on the onerous night before the polls. So many surprises were to be stirred. Final iconoclastic stroke waited to be executed. Dank flatulence tactfully wandered through the dark streets in political impersonation. All the corrupting money now secure in voters’ pockets; bottles drunk; cajoling and touching of feet having utilised its full persuasive charm, voters were now restituting their flustered senses to fix the mind on a definite election symbol.

If handled with a political acumen it could be the night of winsome behooves. All of them were damn sure that ‘the night before the polling day decides the fate of the contestants’. So, the really serious minded were not to sleep tonight. They were to devise flummoxing strategies to come to grips with sudden upheavals. The long night seemed perpetually prolonged and muddily calamitous in which they waited with bated breath to reel off expletives and sling big splashes of dirt over the rivals’ face in order to blindfold them at the last and most crucial moment.

In such a pal of gaggled dark vaguely spread over the village, an unconsecrated irony struck the village. A man aged 30 or 35 died during the night, quietly without anyone’s notice. He was the person whose injuries would heal like an elephant’s. Most injured man in the village, his not a single limb was without a butcherly mark. Seeing these insipid mementoes he’d say musingly, “It seems as if I’ll die only when my neck is cut like a stump!” As a truck driver he was just like a loose whiff of breeze living life in rambling from here to there, without caring for the insistent haggling of his injuries. And lived a fully promenading life this way. In an inept fornication with his tough job of driving for weeks at a stretch on petrified roads, he became a drug addict. Took wine, opium, poppy and hashish to the limits; got afflicted to TB; never took precautions while still immersed in the addiction; suffered numerous setbacks; and finally died on the night before the polling day. His death however seemed to make one thing sure; that at least destiny wanted to save him from the last setback-–the casting of his vote. At least he was saved of a ‘moral horror and a muddy bath’.

Isn’t it a reality that a voter’s apathy is just like the God’s, who might be helplessly going mad after watching the deeds of his creation? Similarly, a voter, builder of the great institution of democracy, the maker of MLAs, MPs and those highest in the office, feels so helpless once he’s put his soul’s imprint on a particular election symbol, because it’s not a candidate he chooses, rather his unfulfilled goals, hopes and aspirations.