Every 5 years, a billion unsuspecting souls in the most populous democracy on earth enact a charade of monumental proportions that goes under the name of Annual General Elections. Democracy is but a pseudonym for mobocracy, rule of the mob, mafia, dons and various lumpen elements of society in the garb of the whitewashed, steam-pressed, megawatt-smile-bearing, hand-pressing, back-slapping politician with rudely healthy finances basking in the salubrious climes and anonymity of Switzerland. Couldn’t the combined intellectual might of centuries fabricate a better political system than might is right? Indeed, the reams of press accorded to the notion of democracy as a panacea to cure all the world’s political ills, reeks of a plot of Machiavellian ingenuity hatched by politicians to project themselves as saviors of the world from all manner of evil - from communists, dictators, big business, big banks, greedy capitalists, illegal immigrants, terrorists etc., and in the process, laugh all the way to the nearest Swiss bank. It must be said though that in this miasmic cesspool, the voices of erudition and sincerity, of deserving and capable leaders genuinely wanting to make a difference to society, wanting to effect a change in the way government functions, wanting to improve the net lot of each and every denizen of their respective constituencies without heed to the cancer of special interest groups, are as lost as the Mahatma would be in a trendy disco with flashing lights. What could be done to bring such individuals to the forefront of our political consciousness instead of the dusty back-burner where they languish, to cleanse this gutter of Amazonian proportions that the political system in the country had become? What could be done to devise a fairer system of electing a candidate who represents all sections of society and all individuals as opposed to this or that majority community or caste or religion? What could be done to ensure that his actions are always representative of the wishes of his constituency, and not diametrically opposed or callously indifferent to them?
Such were the exaltedly ambitious thoughts that swam around in the hyperactive cranium of Ramu, the self-anointed leader and brains trust of the Ramu Somu duo of local fame (or notoriety some say), known throughout Shivajinagar as much for their ingeniously crackpot schemes as for their academic fiascos (they were repeating fourth grade for the second year running). The immediate stimulus for these thoughts was of course the Lok Sabha elections, to be held in two weeks time, of which Shivajinagar constituency was technically as equal a participant as any blue eyed Prime Ministerial constituency.
Every year, the same depressing story repeated itself, ad nauseam. Namely, that of unworthy candidates, having to choose between rocks and hard places, corruption, negligence which would be considered criminal were it not perpetrated by makers of the law, lack of attention to pressing problems such as crumbling roads, dilapidated and outdated schools and teachers, stench from uncollected garbage, and so on. Shivajinagar had turned, from a cheerful town of laidback and friendly people, into a grim town of cynics who cribbed, carped and generally made themselves lugubriously useless at every available opportunity.
This year, however, the story was a little different, in that Inamdar, the English teacher at VJHS (Veermata Jijabai High School for the uninitiated - attended mostly in absentia by our truants), renowned for his honesty, had decided to throw his hat into the ring. He was standing as an independent candidate, he declared, since he wanted to restore the town’s independence from the crooks in white, affiliated to the major political parties, who had bled the town dry, and were now preparing to feast on the rotting carcass. Inamdar was more absentminded academic than politician, more Einstein than Obama, of average height, straddling the border between plumpness and obesity, with a crazy mop of uncontrollable, unmanageable, black hair exploding in all directions, streaked gray in bold, broad strokes, with a handlebar mustache that seemed like a close relative of the mop, bushy eyebrows approaching the thickness of the mustache, kind eyes, a largish nose with no semblance of symmetry to it, and crazy twitching hands, that were always gesticulating uncontrollably in some secret language of their own. He also evidently didn’t own an iron, or if he did it was dysfunctional, given his perennially crumpled appearance, like the newspaper in which the samosas he consumed everyday were wrapped in. Regardless of his appearance, he was known for his impeccable honesty and courage. It took special courage to think counter to the prevailing headwinds of pessimistic apathy and cynical inaction, to imagine a bright new dawn when the night seemed so depressingly interminable.
Inamdar also coincidentally happened to be an excellent orator. In an impassioned speech, he appealed for help and support from his community of teachers, students and well-wishers in order to be able to defenestrate the ruling elite, who had money, muscle and media at their beck and call. Sarfodkar from the ruling TFS party, and Lootmare from the opposition MCP(L) party had between them, made Shivajinagar their personal fiefdom, and had an arrangement to swap the seat every 5 years. They had combined their considerable clout to shut out any third force, and had been merrily carrying on with this arrangement for the last 8 elections, or 40 years. Ramu and Somu were deeply moved by Inamdar’s oratorial (even if not sartorial) brilliance. They made a solemn resolution to do all in their power to bring Inamdar to power. Actually the decision was all Ramu’s, Somu’s role was confined to nodding in silent acquiescence. However, Ramu still liked to retain the illusion of joint decision-making. Not that Somu minded in the slightest. He was the first to acknowledge Ramu’s bizarre genius for hatching ingenious plots, so what if they didn’t always come off as envisioned. And besides, he was all bustling practicality, and preferred to leave the intellectual gymnastics department to the more theoretically inclined Ramu.
Sarfodkar-Lootmare (Saloo for short) employed a handful of malicious strategies, perfected over the years to bamboozle the electorate, browbeat competitors, and ensure exclusive control over swindling rights to Shivajinagar. Success breeds complacency. Complacency is the enemy of success. To these truisms, clear as the daylight between Dhoni’s bat and pad, Saloo were blissfully oblivious. One of their tried and tested tactics was to throw money at the problem. They would plaster the town with such a maelstrom of posters (“no wall left behind” they called it) and handbills, buy up all airtime on local news and radio channels, blare loudspeakers from dawn to dusk in every locality, and in doing so, blast out their opponents with brute force. Come election day, brainwashed voters could only see Saloo on the candidate list, akin to a halo of the sun’s image floating around obviating everything else, when one was injudicious enough to glance right at the sun. Another cunning trick was to play the politics of divide and rule (aka vote banks) where votes were deposited en masse in exchange for mala fide promises hollower than the barren pipes that were promised as the answer to Shivajinagar’s chronic water shortages in a bygone era. By compartmentalizing the gullible, illiterate populace into parochial blocs, and snaring the leaders of said blocs into their net of promises of personal enrichment, Saloo were able to procure buckets, barrels and tankers-full of votes without having to break much sweat, which broke all too easily in Shivajinagar’s soakingly humid, blistering hot climate. Yet another subtle ploy was to buy so-called swing voters, minorities whose votes literally determined electoral outcomes, by showering them with laptops, televisions, hard cash, etc. funded from the exchequer of course.
Plots, subplots and grand subplots were forming like fractals in Ramu’s prodigiously well-connected neural pathways. Existing networks were relentlessly and recursively explored and new ones formed to extract information leading to the scoundrels’ labyrinthine lair. In this labor-intensive exercise, Somu shone with the radiance of a thousand diligent suns. Execution being his forte, his veritable raison d’être, Somu with the aid of trusted informants and accomplices, succeeded in unearthing a golden nugget of information leading to a murky personality by name of Mr.D, a key part of Saloo’s trusted inner circle. Mr.D’s background was shrouded in a mysterious fog that not even his closest confidants had any inkling of. To all outward appearance, he was a diligent, industrious member of the MCP(L) known for his exceptional administrative abilities. Somu’s piercing reconnaissance revealed a desperately dark secret. Deep down in the murkiest chambers of Mr.D’s enigmatic heart, a grudge had been secretly nursed for decades. Many monsoons ago, in a mistily distant epoch, he had been president of the Shivajinagar unit of the MCP(L) party and had been eyeing a coveted parliament seat through his -5.5 powered telescopic spectacles. When the sitting member of parliament retired from politics, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Mr.D would occupy the vacant post (indeed he had even printed gold-embossed visiting cards reading: Hon. Shri D…, Member of Parliament, Shivajinagar constituency, Republic of India) when a thunderbolt arrived from the blue in the unexpected personality of Lootmare to trample his tenderly nurtured plans. Lootmare, who was an obnoxiously rich sugar baron back then, had muscled his way to the parliament nomination through money power, and once he won, there was no looking back. Mr.D then went into a deep funk and decades long depression from which recovery seemed as bleak as a West Indian cricket resurgence.
Cunningly latching on to these dreadfully dark feelings, Somu had established contact with Mr.D through his underground network, announcing himself as a well-wisher having great connections. Mr.D’s dreams, which had slowly been ground to the finest imaginable dust through the mill of Saloo’s overbearing decades long dominance, flickered after an eternity. The chance of a lifetime to give it back lock stock and barrel to Lootmare was temptation he didn’t have the mental fortitude to resist. Sensitive information pertaining to dubious monetary transactions and illegal election conduct was passed on through the network to a certain member of the Election commission, and simultaneously to a gentleman in the press.
Lootmare’s election campaign exploded with the deafening roar of a hundred Diwali rope bombs, chained together, inside a drum in the dead of night. The ensuing debris and shards from the explosion resulted in a swift and premature end to his political career, and years of incarceration at worst, or running from the law at best, loomed ahead. Sarfodkar was so shattered upon this rather rude chain of events and the loss of his bosom buddy, confidant and political partner that he decided to voluntarily withdraw from the fray for the time being and lie low, lest the same terrible fate befall him. Inamdar, thus, won a facile victory by default, one which was welcomed by the stupefied constituents with such fanfare as to reprise memories of recently concluded Diwali.
As for Ramu Somu, they passed the annual exam on the third attempt, courtesy some exceedingly generous grace marks from the new Member of Parliament from Shivajinagar.