Battle for Bittora

by Anuja Chauhan

  I looked up.

  'I'm awarding him a medal,' I said. 'You know that, Amma, you were there.'

  She sniffed and turned a page.

  'See, here is the pilla's photo, cutting a ribbon at a computer centre in Durguja,' she pointed. 'Which candidate would you vote for, hain? The one marrying a naked man or the one inaugurating an internet cafe?'

  'Amma,' I said, rolling my eyes. 'Chill, okay?'

  She'd been spoiling for a fight ever since her chat with Tawny. Luckily, some old associate of hers, who owed her for god-alone-knows-what favour, had sent us a decent chunk of money. Gudia aunty had driven to Shortcut's place and picked it up last night.

  We were splitting forces today. I was headed for the deep dark interiors of rural Bittora, with Munni and Rocket Singh for company. Amma, who'd been looking rather wan, was staying behind to work the urban areas on my behalf. Gudia aunty was staying put in Begumbagh too, because the district commissioner's office was here and, as election agent, she had to visit it every two days with all our fudged expense accounts. According to her official accounts, we'd spent a modest seven lakhs in campaigning so far. In reality, we had spent over seventy. I tried not to think about it - it gave me nightmares.

  'We don't know what you will do there without us to watch over you,' Amma muttered direly as she threw aside one efficiently sucked mango heart and started on another. 'Start some scandal or get yourself disqualified.'

  'I'll be fine!' I told her bracingly, feeling a little guilty about how bubbly I was feeling. It had gotten too claustrophobic in Saket Bhavan. 'Don't worry, Amma!'

  It was a two-hour journey by train. We boarded at six, and we would reach by eight, in time for a long day of campaigning. It was faster than travelling by the roads -- which were particularly disastrous in these areas. The train moved at a good clip and I peered out the murky AC window as well as I could, trying not to slosh my tea about. The jungle outside seemed beautiful.

  'Durguja has some of the lushest jungles in north India,' Rocket Singh told me proudly. 'The tribals here guard their forest like tigers. If you do poaching here, they pick you up by your navel with an iron hook, yeh... aisey,' he raised his bush shirt, hooked his finger into his flabby brown belly button and demonstrated graphically while Munni winced, 'then they shave your head with a knife and leave you hanging upside-down from the trees.'

  'Wow,' I said, 'they sound really fierce.'

  Rocket Singh shook his head. 'No no... they are very gentle people. They go to church every Sunday. And they sing so soothingly, like angels.'

  The jungle passed only too quickly, and soon gave way to flat farmland. Munni fell asleep, her little pink mouth wide open, and when Rocket Singh got up to go to the loo, I stretched out my legs in the space he had vacated, leaned back and anticipated a glorious sunrise. Peering out, I realized the sun would rise from the other side, so I got up and went to the corridor. But suddenly, and with no station in sight, the train started slowing down.

  Wondering what was up, I knelt down to window level and flattened my nose against the dingy tinted glass.

  And saw a surreal sight.

  There was a little army of people outside, swathed in grey blankets and white dhotis, carrying empty pista green and dirty pink plastic buckets, glass bottles and aluminium vessels.

  As the train slowed to an almost halt, they leapt onto it gracefully. Six of them entered our bogie, three from either side. They didn't enter the corridor but headed purposefully for the loos instead.

  Wondering what exactly was going on, I made my way to the loos closer to our bogie, the ones into which Rocket Singh would have gone.

  It was quite dark in the corridor, a blue light burned overhead, and the waiter who'd brought our tea was fast asleep, curled up with his face to the wall, in the little alcove before the loos. I stepped past him, opened the door into the loo area near the doors and smiled uncertainly at the mustachioed men-with-buckets. None of them smiled back, but one of them did raise an imperious arm, as if asking me to wait my turn. So I waited.

  I then realized that they were doing the strangest thing. They were standing in the Western-style loo and filling their plastic buckets with water from the train taps.

  As I watched, open-mouthed, they filled one, two, four, seven buckets, three two-litre plastic Pepsi bottles and a small black Sintex tank. All this, while the train moved along, really slowly, never stopping completely, but so slow that I saw a herd of cows overtake it from the left.

  When the taps started to cough and splutter, and all that came out of them was a dry hissing sound, the three dudes picked up their loaded containers and leapt smoothly off the train, barely spilling any water in the process. I saw more of them emerge from every door of the train, all lugging filled baltis and bartans, moving quickly and economically, and with the ease of long practice.

  They melted away into the high jungle grass that lined the tracks on both sides, even as the sun came bursting out, a cheerful ball of red in a sky the colour of turmeric.

  And then Rocket Singh's aggravated voice floated out from the Indian-style loo.

  'Abbey, who finished the water, behencho--?'

  ***

  We reached Doodhiya station around eight. There'd been total mayhem on the train when everybody woke up and discovered that the tankis on the train had been drained dry. People wandered about, toothbrush in mouth, constipated expressions on their faces. Especially the people who were going all the way to Delhi - they were truly, literally, up shit creek.When we got off the train, the loos (and even the bogies) had started to stink.

  We disembarked to the cheers of a thousand-member reception committee, all shouting Pragati Party slogans with full gusto, and were ushered into the ubiquitous Tata Sumos. I looked closely at the people who'd come to pick us up, but they all looked well-washed, not at all like they had been languishing for water for weeks. Maybe they bathed in water purloined from trains too.

  'How's the mood?' I asked Munni, peering nervously through the banners draped over the windshields. Suddenly, my cockiness had drained away and I was feeling very lost without Amma.

  She beamed, her big cheeks glowing bright. 'Super, didi! Super!' she said heartily.

  I looked at her, irritated. What was with the constant Super Didi thing? Now I was what, Wonder Woman?

  'Munni,' I snapped. 'Tell me the truth.'

  She wrapped her dupatta vigorously round and round her neck, avoided my eyes, and said glibly, 'We have distributed a thousand EVM mockups to the workers. They are taking them everywhere, explaining them to the people.'

  I frowned.

  'But shouldn't we talk to them about all the other THID things? The ones Mr Urvashi said are a big issue here? Like thirst and healthcare?'

  She nodded vaguely. 'Of course, didi. You have to promise them water and public health systems. But more importantly, you have to explain how the EVM works - this is the area where the rumour has spread that the EVM takes your photograph. The IJP workers have told the people that if they don't vote for Zain bhai then he will come to know and burn their houses. The people are completely convinced of it. What to do?'

  Like I had the faintest idea. I knew how tough these rumours were to shake off once they started. We could take apart the EVMs and show the dour Doodhiya dudes there was no camera till we were blue in the face, and they still wouldn't believe us. They were positively ox-like. Amma would say it was the lack of iodine in their diet.

  'We'll think of something,' I said inadequately. -And Munni, tell me, how come things are so bad here that people are stealing water from trains?'

  She looked at me in frank bewilderment.

  'This is not a fact-finding mission, didi,' she said. 'Never mind why they don't have water. Just promise them water. And doctors.'

  Just then the Sumo stopped and, armed with this bit of advice, I rose to my feet to be welcomed into the 'low caste' Ambedkar colony for an informal breakfast meeting. The entire village had turned out to meet me.
There were people sitting everywhere, in the courtyard, on top of the courtyard walls, in a tractor trolley parked nearby; all looking at me and my outgrowing half-blown rosebud cut with big-big eyes. Big mommy buffaloes, tethered to the walls, chewed cud impassively. Three little kids with black threads tied around distended bellies, one of whom was picking at a pus-encrusted purple sty in his left eye, were seated in front of me. Everybody had these large fake smiles pasted on their faces as two small giggling girls ran up to me and handed me a big, tight posy of desi gulab framed in a fan of mango leaves while a gaggle of eleven-year-old boys, out to prove that their village school teacher was no slacker, sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to welcome me.

  'Namaste,' I said, smiling as I flashed the Pragati Party finger symbol. The kids pointed back good-naturedly. 'Helllllo!' they chorused. Except for one little girl who was squatting in the mud, painstakingly sticking on tiny, shiny red 'Finger' stickers to each of her fingernails. She wiggled her fingers so that they glittered in the light and smiled in delight.

  I fiddled with my rose bouquet, sat down on a folding aluminium chair, beamed at everyone, took a deep breath and said, without preamble, in my rather crappy Pavit Pradeshi: 'You guys have heard right. There is a camera inside the EVMs.'

  There was a stunned silence, and a small choking sound from behind me -- probably Munni, strangling on her own dupatta.

  And then everybody started talking at once.

  They were so glad I was telling the truth! They weren't fools, you know, they understood today's modern techonologies! There was a 'chip', they said knowledgeably. It recorded everything!

  I nodded and inhaled my roses as everybody around chattered away, and then held out my hand for a plastic EVM mockup. Munni handed it to me with trembling hands. I bet she didn't think everything was super-didi-super now.

  'Wanna know where the camera is?' I asked the crowd. They nodded, all agog.

  I held up the mockup, drawing out the silence for as long as I could. Then I pointed dramatically at a little black hole in the top left hand corner of the EVM. 'There!' I announced. "The camera is there!'

  Major sensation!

  That's exactly where they had thought it would be! The angle was perfect, the camera would capture the face of the voter and also which particular button he or she was pressing! It was a marvellous mechanism! And the photos would go directly into the air - via Blue Truth, they informed me knowledgeably -right onto Zain bhai's TV screen in the Fort. So now they hoped I would understand why it was impossible of them to vote for me and that there were no hard feelings, right?

  But I shook my head. 'This is not about whether you vote for me or not,' I said loftily. 'This is about your freedom, under the Indian constitution, to exercise your right to vote safely and anonymously.'

  They all looked a little wary at this.

  'See, it's very simple,' I told them. 'All you have to do when you go in to vote is lift your thumb and place it firmly like this, right over the little black hole. That way you cover the camera, see? The picture will come all dark-dark. And then just press the button -- on whatever symbol you like -- with your other hand!'

  Everybody mulled over this. Munni handed out more EVM mockups and some of the people tried to practise the manoeuvre, covering the little black hole in the top left hand corner (god only knows what it was) and pressing on a symbol (the Finger, mosdy, I noted with a quickening heart) with the index finger of their right hand.

  Finally, a few of them started nodding. 'Haan,' they said, 'camera mein picture black aayegi. Blue Truth will send back a black picture only!' People started grinning and slapping their hands on their thighs. Munni, sensing the change in mood, instantly started explaining the how-to-cover-the-camera manoeuvre to the slowpokes in the back who hadn't caught on as yet.

  I grinned around happily. A lot of people grinned back - not so fixedly this time, I thought. 'Now tell me,' I asked, finally finding the gumption to get off the aluminum chair and sit cross-legged on the floor with the ladies in the front row. 'What exactly is the cause of the water problem here?'

  ***

  'Jin?'

  It was 11:16 p.m. The chat box on my Facebook page had popped up with a little boinnng sound. Frenemy Altaf Khan wanted to chat online with me.

  I stared at it in horrid fascination, then finally typed out:

  'What?'

  'I dig your pic with the naked wrestler. Very sexy.'

  I gave a little snort of laughter and typed back: 'And I don't dig your snaky move, complaining about me to the EC goons.'

  'Nothing personal,' came the glib reply. 'Where are you?'

  'Where are you?'I asked right back.

  'Very close by,' he replied. 'At Bunty's. Listen, stop stalking my Facebook account.'

  'Excuse me?' I wrote, puzzled.

  'Yeah...' he wrote back. 'I've got a Visitor Monitoring Program installed, and it reveals that you've visited my homepage sixteen times since day before yesterday. You're constantly, stealthily browsing through my pictures and my posts. It's creepy. Stop it.'

  For one sinking moment I thought it was true. That he really knew. How long I had stared at that picture of him laughing as he leaned against the sun-dappled wall in his grey school sweater. Or the one in which he looked all preppie and cool. And then the other one in the black achkan with his hair all slicked back. But then I figured he was bluffing. I mean, no way. He couldn't possibly know. There was no such software.

  'You stop stalking ME!' I blustered back aggressively. 'I've got the Visitor Monitoring thingie too, and it reveals that you're ALWAYS on my home page, composing pathetic, needy messages on my wall and then quickly deleting them without posting.'

  'Bullshit,' he wrote. 'You're lying.'

  'YOU'RE lying' I retorted.

  'Well, yes. I'm lying in bed. And you're lying in bed too, aren't you, Jinni?'

  My mind and my body split cleanly into two. I rolled over on my stomach and watched as my fingers typed back an answer dreamily.

  'Yes, I'm in bed. Are you still wearing that nice white kurta?'

  But he was obviously not in the mood to answer questions.

  'So, technically, we're lying in bed... together.'

  My mouth went dry.

  I slowly typed back: 'Technically... yes.'

  A very long pause followed.

  The 'Zain is typing' message started flashing and I stared at it like someone hypnotized.

  Finally,

  'You feel soft. And... buttery. And you smell like roses. And you're begging to be kissed. Shall I kiss you, Jinni?'

  I gazed stupidly at the screen, a moronic smile on my face. Then gave a sudden start of horror, pulled my fingers away from the keyboard like they'd been burned and slammed the laptop shut.

  ***

  I really didn't know what was happening to me. At one level, I was campaigning through the FUCT and THID areas, promising water, jobs and healthcare to the common man. At another, I was in a permanent state of hyper-awareness, constantly hoping to hear the khatakhatakhata of the blades of Zain's low-flying chopper.

  I've turned into Jaya Bachchan in K3G, I thought, disgusted with myself. The way she quivered and got major shivers of anticipation at the very sound of Shah Rukh's helicopter...

  No way could I deny that I was a hopeless, seething mass of frenemy alerts and pheromones. Which was not only loser-like but also supremely shallow. Seriously, what kind of a sicko was I, wandering through the homes of malnourished and suffering people in a state of continuous, feverish lust?

  Munni and Rocket Singh didn't seem to notice anything amiss, though.

  Rocket Singh reported that Zain's workers had come round to Doodhiya again, still talking about the camera in the EVMs. The canny villagers had apparently nodded and promised their vote to Zain bhai, all the while slyly laughing up their sleeve about how they were going to block the camera with their thumb.

  We'd got Gudia aunty to lodge a complaint with the election commission about Zain's
helicopter, saying it was violating both air traffic control and the twenty-five lakh budget constraint, but it hadn't worked. Apparently, they had all the permissions in place, and it was a personal chopper, belonging to his buddy Bunty's steel company, and he was letting Zain use it free of charge.

  'But didi, statistics of helicopters crashing during political campaigning is very high,' Munni said encouragingly. 'Let us hope for the best...'

  And then there were all these pictures which kept coming out in the local paper, of Zain emerging from the chopper, looking like some kind of concerned, idealistic rock star in his dark glasses, white kurta and sleeveless bomber jacket. He definitely looked the part of new-age politician much more than me, who was always being photographed with snotty children, swathed in an amateurishly tied crumpled sari, all mouth and Half-Mad Full-Crack haircut. He looked powerful and 'swayve' and like he could get things done. I looked, well, Nave.

  Nave versus Swayve, I kept thinking all the time. Any bets on who would win this thing?

  I remembered how I'd said they'll be saying I stole your seat soon enough, anyway to him that night in Jummabagh, and how patronizingly he'd smiled at me, and the blood rushed to my cheeks, hot and angry. He was trying to play me for a loser, I thought, distracting me with all that guff about how buttery I was. Well, I was not going to let anything shift my focus away from rocking the FUCT and THID areas of Doodhiya-Durguja and Sujanpur.

  We were headed for the Good Friday mass in the tribal jungles of Durguja today. I had spent most of the drive explaining to Munni that it was in very bad taste for her to go Happy Good Friday! Happy Good Friday! to all the Christians we would meet in the welcoming committee. It had been hard going.

  'But didi, it is called Good, how can it be good if He died that day?' she'd protested. 'It should be called Bad Friday... or Sad Friday or Black Friday...'

  But she finally piped down when, after driving for hours through thick, dark forest, we reached the church and she was faced with a giant blowup of the tortured, suffering face of Jesus, sweating blood beneath his crown of thorns. 'Hai Ram,' she gasped and subsided, awed.