Ah,those 3 painfully long hours I spent in a queue outside a shabby run down shack inside the National Library premises. Interestingly enough, this was not the queue to cast my vote, but the queue to collect my Voter ID card.Seriously,what was I thinking?
After those 3 hours ,as I walked out of the gate with my brand new voting card in my hand, I actually felt faintly patriotic. Here,in my hands,was documentary proof that I am a citizen of the country(My driver's license was still 2 weeks away,how I passed,I'll never know).Of course the photo on the card looked nothing like me.It looked a cross between Charles Manson's mug shot and Rowan Atkinson's blank stare .Still I rejoiced in the fact that my name was spelt correctly and they got my age and sex right.That's just plain good luck.
The last week of April saw the bong news channels flooded with news stories and "exit polls" predicting the fortunes of Buddha and Mamata(cant believe I actually typed that out).The coverage was mind boggling. Opinion polls, interviews, analysis. .et all.Elderly bearded people wearing stuff you sleep in predicting the future of Calcutta.I was excited. I'd be voting for the first time! The only thing that worried me was how long it would take to get that stupid ink stain off my nail. But I could live with that.
The real dilemma struck me late Wednesday evening, roughly 13 hours before I actually voted. I had no idea who the candidates were!.So I asked around and I got quite a shock.I had to choose between Tapas Pal and Biplab Chatterjee. Yeah. You read right. Not exactly Sophie's choice!
My first vote,ever and these two bumbling b-grade movie star pretend morons vying for it.And oh, the third candidate was the local goon.Though I contemplated not voting at all and being fashionably "urban cool" in doing so, I decided to go ahead with it.How bad could it be?
Obscenely early on Thursday morning ,I arrived at the Voting "station". A run down corporation school with empty whiskey bottles conspicuously placed behind the doors( I kid you not.THAT scary!). I waited for my turn .I waited and waited. Finally, I entered the little "tent" they call a booth, where the voting officer (?) looked up at my face and tried to find some hint of resemblance between myself and the photo on the card. Amidst the roars of the people behind me telling me "hurry up!!", I walked up to the “machine”.Very Floydish.
It’s irony at its cruelest .I'm finally authorized to vote for a candidate I think will make a difference and here I am left with two insufferable clods-one who flaunts his pot belly in a very revealing fishnet shirt-and the other infamous for performing what is probably the highest number of on-screen rapes.The latter's movies range from just south of low budget porn while the former's cinematic escapades are the subject of bengali medium ridicule.No offense.
Sad situation. The bright side ? Thank god “MLA Fatakesto”(the promos crack me up!) is just a movie and not a real campaign! Now wouldn’t that be a real tragedy!
I’ll come up with a “What was Mithun thinking?” blog in the near future....NOT.
Until Next Time,I'm back to save the Universe.
AJ
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