ELECTIONS

Like all others now a days even I too felt election fever once. ‘Why not run for the elections?’ I whispered into ears of my wife, thinking if she finds it just rubbish no other person would know. But to my amazement, she spontaneously agreed hugging me close, ‘tomorrow is the last day for filing nominations, come on let us do it’. When my wife agrees to something, I’m sure it won’t happen, and I slept in assurance, had she said no then I might have given a thought. I don’t mind her taking part even in Formula 1 drive on the busy street of Kalba Devi. But, if she agrees with going on Bajaj Street to vegetable market, I’m scared till she gets back home safe & two days even after her safe arrival. As she doesn’t know how vehicles may might have collided & banged their head with walls or onto other vehicles in pursuit of saving my ever ignorant wife.

By my first tea next morning, I received my first call congratulating me on my decision of filing nomination for the elections. I was more than astonished but when realized the fellow was my brother in laws friend active in politics, I came to know it was my better half who had publicized our bedroom goofing. ‘Listen’, I was trying to keep my cool while calling her, yet the volume was just more than normal. ‘Look, it is just the matter of few million bucks, so why bother. I’ve managed everything; you just sign the papers’. Wife should be like that who just rightly guesses what her husband wanted to tell her; furthermore if she knows how to cool off her husband before he opens his mouth than it’s icing on cake.

It all happened just automatically, as if I was dreaming. By noon there were few hundred people gathered in front of my home sloganeering & hailing my name. I even visualized my photo dangled on the wall just next to Mahatma Gandhi for a moment. My wife had turned me into politician just within hours; it took me more than half of century to somewhat settle in life & take breath of comfort in chilly air-conditioned atmosphere. I had sighed of relief that my both son & daughter got married to their best of choices & settled rich abroad. And we were just relived off, returned from our world tour & I’d just started feeling of my dream of lifetime got true. I never know my thirty year companion was so explosive & excited on my entering politics through electioneering. It was not even twelve hours that I was filing my papers in collector office with much funfair after I first spoke of elections just like that to my wife in utmost privacy.

I was more than amazed with all those banners, posters, larger than life size cut outs, hand bills as if it is only me who exists in the city. Suddenly at every nook & corner people started giving me familiar glance, everything bought out not deserved. ‘When do we leave to meet the public in our ward?’ to my such a honest question everybody, including the poodle in my wife’s’ arm I suspected, plunged into laughter. ‘Your huby is too immature in politics’ her brothers’ friend said to my wife while skillfully holding his liquor glass taking care it won’t spill down. ‘It is all taken care of my innocent buddy’ my flamboyant brother in law assured me while patting my back & perhaps winking at others in the party I clearly felt. ‘You just get ready tomorrow morning in dhoti instead of in jogging suit’. ‘Dhoti, I’m not used to dhoti, I just can’t handle it’. I tried to resist yet nobody listened, as if all was set I’d to do as said. Next morning, they made me up with clean shave, tikka on forehead, dhoti, long shirt, Gandhi topi to cover my graying hairs & oil applied Kolhapuri chappals in my otherwise shoes wearing feet. ‘Always keep hands folded’ my wife made it too loud & clear by chanting the line till she slept yesterday & since woke up in the morning today.

Trampled each & every lane & by lane in the ward I stood. Kept hands folded to every living organisms while my wife kept constant vigil on me. Offered prayers at least three hundred plus temples, broke thousands of coconut to wherever they asked me to be it at the temple, gurudwara, mosque doorstep or launching gym to airport terminal to railway station, which never will come up, during those eleven days of schedule. I spoke lie countless number of times as I went on reading the master minded drafting handed to me. I promised just everything but heaven during the elections speeches making me feel myself no less than god, if all those promises come true. It felt like I truly got fed up all those yet, thanked profusely to my family doctor, the poor guy would come every night to apply some soothing lotion, spray on my whole body especially my aching legs & make me pop few pills to get me relived of day long hectic leg breaking walks.

It was result day, everybody but me were anxious to know about the announcements. I was more than sure that, with so many lies, loss of money, fooling around people; who’d vote for me. Isn’t there a place for commonsense? How can I make airport where making a Jogging Trac was impossible due to space scarcity. How to build dam without flowing river, power plant with no chance of getting coal to burn, flyover where in there is not even a trail or no laying railway tracks at the destination where hardly any people ply. Having done business for so many years I knew it was just not easy to generate jobs. And without money the really real big money how it would happen? ‘You won!!!’ even the air trembled in our hall with that; it was none other than my wife. She hugged me & kissed my lips passionately in front of our kids their spouses & other hundred odd men. And I reduced to paltry flesh & fell in our posh couch, partially due to ashamed of being kissed in public & largely due to knowing my false promises to the public & my inability to deliver. I’d to wonder among them as being called myself as liar.

‘Politics is the play of impossible’, my brother in laws’ friend was patting his friend with laughter spilling his lips I never seen before.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar