'No, Munni,' I said, my cheeks hot with humiliation. 'He was absolutely right. Tell me, can I visit some schools and health centres in the area, anonymously?'
She shook her head vehemently. 'Uff... not now, Sarojini didi! After you win election, you can do all this surprise visits and upliftments and all! Right now, we are doing campaigning...'
We shuffled along to the next door where, after peering at the chipped plywood nameplate, Munni told me that we were about to enter a Dalit home. Gingerly, I enquired if they were of the same caste as she was, but she instantly drew herself up very tall and shook her head. 'Oh no,' she said loftily. These are very inferior type Dalit people. My family are very high-caste Dalits.'
Well, of course, what was I thinking, I thought resignedly. There would be a complicated pecking order amongst Dalits as well.
The house was full of giggling women and a few sleeping babies. One, two, three... five... seven... there were nine women in all, who looked over eighteen years of age. Nine votes for the Pragati Party, if I could convert them with sheer vim and wit!
They were sitting out in the shady, khus-scented aangan, where a desert cooler was keeping everything very cool indeed. So cool, in fact, that one of the ladies was knitting a remarkably ugly sweater.
This time, I decided grimly, I would get to the point straightaway. Before Munni even started off on the Pragati Party speil, I was going to butt in and say, 'Excuse me, behenji, par aap ka gusalkhana kahan hai?' I was quickly coming to realize that the two most important things about political campaigning were 1) loo access and 2) bladder control.
Asking for the loo seemed to break the ice. When I came back after washing my hands, wiping them dry on the pallu of my sari, the ladies looked me up and down appraisingly all right, but they also offered me a cup of hot adrak ki chai and a moodha to sit on.
I sat down, sipped my tea, and flashed around my extra-wide smile.
They giggled.
One of them reached out and fingered the folds of my cotton sari. 'Suti hai,' she sniffed, not very impressed. 'Cotton.'
'Blouj is very boring, but,' chimed in a third.
'Earrings nice hai,' another one declared grudgingly.
'TV serial type ka blouj, why don't you wear?' demanded one of the ladies, who was wearing a rather tight choli herself.
Munni cleared her throat and said with prim stridency, 'Sarojini didi Gandhian hain, simple hain. Isliye.'
I grinned at them, switched to Pavit Pradeshi, and said, 'Ammaji does not let me wear small blouses. She says if I wear small-small blouses, her nose will get cut into small small pieces also!'
They looked rather scornful at this.
'Why you listen so much to your Ammaji? Everybody wears like that nowadays.'
'She thinks we're fools. In Delhi, she must be wearing small-small clothes only,' someone whispered behind me.
'Oho, didn't you hear? She's from Bombay,' came another whisper.
The lady who was knitting promptly poked me with the end of her needle and asked me which Bollywood hero I liked best.
But before I could answer, an intellectual looking type asked bluntly, 'What qualification you have?'
I told her. She nodded, not very impressed, and asked me if my degree was equivalent to an M.Phil.
'No,' I answered truthfully. 'It's equivalent to an MA, actually'
She sniffed in a rather superior manner, and the girl sitting next to her said triumphantly, 'Didi has an M.Phil.'
'Fantastic,' I said humbly.
Somebody repeated the Bollywood hero question again, so I gave it the deep thought it merited and decided to play it safe.
'Hrithik Roshan?' I swung a little on the moodha and sang tentatively, 'Dhoom dhoom come light my fire.'
A chorus of giggles greeted this sally. But then a very frail old lady with thin hair and really thick glasses said in a quavering, yet combative voice, 'Hrithik toh ab uncle hai! Woh new boy - Ranbir? Woh kaafi chikna hai!'
I grinned. 'Ammaji, in front of you, Ranbir is an uncle also!'
More giggles. The old lady asked Munni if I was married yet. Munni said I wasn't. 'Engaged?' Munni shook her head, no.
'Why not,' the old lady enquired.
'Nobody asked her, Ammaji,' Munni told her, with a wicked smile in my direction.
The old lady clicked her tongue sympathetically and advised me to eat more amla. She said it would make my hair grow.
Meanwhile, the other girls were nudging each other and murmuring names. Every now and then, one of them would squeal a name out loud. 'Sunny!' 'Akshay!' 'Dhoni!'
Stunned by the extremely high level of this political debate, I sat back on my moodha and did a thumbs up for Akshay, a thumbs down for Sunny and a double thumbs up for Dhoni.
Then a rather sweet young girl leaned forward eagerly and asked if I could show her some of the latest dance steps from Bombay. Munni looked a little put out at this, but I glared her down.
'It's okay,' I hissed. 'Let me do girlie-bonding with them. It shows I'm not stand-offish. Besides, I happen to know all the steps to the Dhan-ta-nan song from Kaminey.'
Ten minutes later, flushed, panting and confident that I'd charmed the ladies and secured nine definite votes for the Pragati Party, I took my leave.
'So I hope I have your vote, then?' I said at the door, beaming around as I wiped the sweat off my face with my pallu.
No reply. Just bright smiles, nudges and lots of giggles.
'Your vote?' I asked again, a little squeakily.
Oh god, I sounded frantic. Quickly, I added a gay laugh and sang out Dhan ta nan... again, just to keep things light.
There was an awkward silence.
Then one of the ladies, a fat matronly one who hadn't spoken a word till now, stepped forward. 'Ekchully, baby, don't mind,' she said apologetically. 'We should have told you earlier, par the thing is ki we are all from Himachal - our voting is not here - we are visiting for two days for a marriage function only.'
Oh.
The sweet one added, very kindly, 'But your dancing was very nice.'
There was an outburst of uncontrollable giggling and then they shut the door on my mortified face.
After several depressing encounters of more or less the same nature, we decided we'd had enough of Champapul and headed home. But then Munni made the Sumo halt once again, very close to Saket Bhavan, just to 'cheer us up' by visiting a home in Begumbagh, a locality where the Pragati is relatively stronger.
The door here was opened by a freshly bathed little boy in a Ben 10 T-shirt. He was sucking solemnly on the head of a remarkably realistic flesh-coloured rubber lizard. So realistic that I screamed and lunged at him and tried to wrest it from his grasp.
He grinned, very gratified by this reaction, and invited us in with a wordless flourish.
'Why you are not in bed?' Munni asked him as he led us into a spic-and-span little drawing room. 'Don't you have school tomorrow?'
The child, fair, apple-cheeked and very sturdy looking, dislodged the lizard's head from his mouth long enough to inform us, in the confident tone of one who is sure of his facts: 'Only donkeys go to school.'
Then he sat down on the sofa and resumed sucking, swinging his legs.
'Achha?' I asked. 'And what do clever people do?'
He considered this question for a while. Then he hopped up, extracted the wet lizard from his mouth, carefully placed it inside a spectacle case on the coffee table, shut it with a snap, and sat down again.
'Business,' he replied vaguely, scratching an impressive looking scab on his knee. 'They talk on cell-phones. And if anybody gets oversmart with them,' he turned his angelic light grey eyes on me and concluded with relish, 'they cut off his balls.'
We heard a low moan behind us.
Munni and I turned around.
A young woman stood in the doorway, holding a basket full of groceries. She was pretty but careworn and a little too thin. A ghost of a nervous tic haunted her left eye. Living with this angelic
little boy was obviously taking its toll.
'Rajul!' she remonstrated in a hopeless sort of way. 'Don't talk like that.'
'Namaste,' I said to her, standing up, folding my hands and smiling.
Munni reared up too and rattled off her 'Aap-hain-Srimati-Sarojini-Pande' speil.
'Please give me your keemti vote,' I chimed in at the end, right on cue.
'Of course,' said Rajul's mom, not very enthusiastically. 'My husband always voted Pragati. So will I.'
'Thank you,' I said, relieved. She sounded totally whatever about it, but I wasn't complaining. She was the first person I'd met today who'd promised to vote for me. Then I started agonizing about whether I should ask her sympathetically if her husband was no more or if that would be considered too intrusive a question... or even offensive, in case he was just out of town, or if they were divorced or something. I finally settled for murmuring vague, soothing noises.
Munni, meanwhile, much relieved at having secured a vote, mentally ticked Rajul's mom off her list, and started backing out of the doorway, intent on hitting the next house. But I said, 'So, Rajul!' and patted the seat beside me, not wanting to come across as someone who left as soon as her purpose had been served. 'Tell me a little about yourself!'
He plopped down obligingly enough and informed me that his name was Rajul Sharma, that he was ten, and that his class teacher had failed him in English yesterday. 'I have to take a retest after the vacations,' he said gloomily. 'But it is not my fault.'
'Oh?' I asked. 'How come?'
He leaned forward.
'The thing is...' he began. Then he stopped.
'What?' I asked curiously.
'Woh picture thi na, Aamir Khan waali..?'
Which one? I wondered as I nodded and smiled at him encouragingly. Ghajini? 3 Idiots?
'I'm dickless sick.'
'Huh?'
He rolled his eyes. 'It's a medical condition,' he explained patiently.
'You mean dyslexic?' I said carefully, trying very hard to keep a straight face. 'Like in Taare Zameen Par?'
'You're laughing at me,' he said accusingly.
'No, I'm not,' I said hastily.
'We dickless sick people can't help being bad in studies,' Rajul said confidingly. 'It's not our fault. You have to be nice to us - give us presents, special attention and plenty of pocket money.'
'But,' I pointed out reasonably enough, 'you've done well in Hindi. So you can't be dyslexic'
'It's selective dicklessicka,' he said solemnly.
'Ohhh.' I arranged my face to look suitably sensitive. 'That explains it.'
'Yes,' he said. 'So I will have to join the Naxals when I grow up. Or go to Bombay and become a Bhai. No one will give me a regular job, na.'
'You could always join politics,' I suggested wittily.
Nobody laughed.
'The state of education in this country,' said Rajul's careworn mother, her voice trembling with intensity, 'is terrible. You must fix that, Sarojiniji.'
'Oh, I plan to,' I answered quickly. 'I am extremely committed to education - especially quality education in the primary classes.'
'The foundation,' volunteered Munni, 'must be strong.'
We all agreed that the foundation must be strong.
Silence for a moment. Then a musing look entered Rajul's seraphic green eyes.
'If you taught me English, I'm sure I would learn fast.'
'Me?' I exclaimed. 'Umm, I'd love to but...' My voice trailed away. I'd just claimed to be passionately committed to primary school education, I couldn't very well slime out of this.
He looked at me. Steadily.
'Um... I'm not going to be home much, because of the campaigning,' I offered weakly. 'I wouldn't want your studies to suffer because of erratic tuitions.'
'When you're away I could watch English programmes on your cable TV,' he said. 'We hardly get electricity here in Begumbagh, you know.'
'The power situation in this country,' put in his mother intensely, 'is terrible. You must fix it, Sarojiniji.'
'Uh, sure,' I said, feeling fully pressured now. 'I will... But Rajul--'
'Is it because we're so poor?' he asked me, swallowing bravely. 'Will I make your beautiful house look untidy?'
Oh god, how many Hindi movies had this kid watched?
'The monetary differences in this country,' put in his mother inexorably, 'are terrible. You must fix it, Sarojiniji.'
'Okay,' I said resignedly. I knew when I was beaten. 'Bring your books and come on Monday.'
Immediately, he beamed. 'D'you get AXN channel?' he enquired, bouncing to his feet. 'And WWE Smackdown and Raw?'
'Bye, Rajul,' I said hastily and got to my feet.
'Really nice meeting you,' I added politely to his mother.
'Oh, really nice meeting you,' she returned, wiping tears from her eyes and clinging to my arm. 'I will definitely make sure he comes and studies with you, every morning. It will be,' her face worked painfully, 'it will be such a break for me! I will tell everybody is this neighbourhood how kind you are! Helping a troubled boy. They will all vote for you!'
'Uh, not every day,' I said uneasily. 'Like I said, I will be campaigning - we will be out early morning to late evening - maybe every fortnight...?'
Rajul's mother narrowed her eyes.
'Every weekday,' she said firmly.
I wilted. 'Okay,' I said.
'Now let me just give you my phone number,' she continued as she produced a cell-phone and fumbled across the table for her spectacle case.
An anticipatory grin stretched across Rajul's angelic face.
'No - wait,' I started to say.
But it was too late.
Rajul's mother's hand encountered the sticky, saliva-slathered lizard inside the case, she pulled it out by its rubbery neck and stared at it in horrified disbelief.
'Super didi, super,' said Munni gloomily as Rajul's mother flung the lizard across the room and screamed and screamed. 'Kya student acquire kiya hai! He will make us all dickless sick only.'
***
5
I woke up next morning to the sound of buffalo. They were lowing and blowing and stamping their feet as they ambled along the road outside Bauji's house, the bells around their necks going tadung tadung tadung.
As the rich reek of fresh buffalo dung assailed my nostrils, I sat up in bed in my Spiderman ganji and pyjamas and groaned.
Last night had been so demoralizing! I had visited ten houses in all. And in all but two, nobody promised to vote for me. They hadn't even been polite enough to lie to my face. They plainly told me that:
'Your party is full of thugs and thieves.'
Or,
'We trust the ex-royal family.'
Or,
'Your grandmother hasn't shown her face for five years, why the hell should we vote for you?'
Or,
'This area has seen absolutely no development for years.'
Or,
'Pay us and we'll think about it.'
I brushed my teeth under the rusty tap and staggered across to the kitchen to cadge a cup of coffee. Joline Bai, disconcertingly clad in a tatty old nylon negligee of Amma's, grunted and shoved a cup towards me. I took a sip and almost gagged.
She regarded me dispassionately. 'You don't like Nescafe?'
I lowered the cup from my lips. Oh, I like Nescafe, I thought. Only, this isn't Nescafe. It's Bhainscafe.
The coffee was made with a huge dollop of thick, oily, stinky buffalo milk. How could I have forgotten? There's no homogenized Mother Dairy milk in Bittora. You know, the civilized milk that comes out of a slot machine or a decent, hygienic packet. Oh no, this was straight-from-the-tit bhains ka doodh -- the ughhest thing about summer vacations here.
I held my breath as unobtrusively as I could, gingerly took a sip, smiled and said, 'Excellent coffee.'
Her mouth did this very tiny weird twitch which, with a huge amount of optimism, could be taken for a six-week foetus of a smile. 'Amma still slee
ping,' she deigned to say.
'Okay,' I said. Then I lowered my voice and asked, 'And Gudia aunty?'
Joline Bai rolled her eyes. She doesn't like Gudia aunty. She resents her constant attempts to 'help'. And she's never forgotten that her best copper cucumber peeler went missing after Gudia aunty came to stay once.
'Counting...' she said, a little obscurely. 'Whole day counting.'
Hmmm, it sounded like Gudia aunty was calculating how much oxygen we had. I picked up my cup and decided to check my mail and found a whole bunch of mails from the dudes at Pixel, bitching and moaning about how I'd left some three projects incomplete when I went on leave. I ignored them and got onto Facebook instead (not that I wanted to visit anyone's page in particular, oh no), where the News Feed informed me that Gaiman Tagore Rumi has checked into shopaholic rehab after overindulging disgracefully at the Mango and Bizarre spring sales.
That bastard, Rumi. Shopping up a storm while I sweated it out in Bittora. I'd been leching at this perfect little ivory crochet top at Bizarre for two months now. Not to mention a pair of stretch jeans at Mango which made my butt look all peachy. I'd totally planned to buy them when they went on sale!
Rumi was online so I messaged him and asked if he'd picked up my stuff too. Then, warily sipping my bhainscafe, I half-heartedly checked out what everybody was talking about on Facebook.
Aamir Khan's new haircut
A wonder squid which could predict which football club was going to win the premier league
Who was going to win American Idol
The glitches in the latest, just-launched Apple gizmo
Hello, people, there's a Lok Sabha election brewing in our country! How about giving it a little mind space?
Rumi replied just then.
Shame on you, thinking about couture when there are starving millions to serve! he'd written. Assumed you'd eschewed everything but saris now that you're an actual umeedwar. When were you planning to break that bit of news to your best friend, huh?
Rumi, I wrote back, gritting my teeth. Just tell me if you got my stuff. And don't think I haven't noticed that you never claimed me as a 'best friend' till the day I became an umeedwar.
Whyn't you pop into RCKC? he wrote back at once. Or Karol Bagh Sari House? You should be able to find something there. And why the hell would I suck up to you, anyway? All the exit polls say you're gonna lose:)
Battle for Bittora Page 11