These last four years plus, they haven’t been all unmitigated, Stygian gloom and doom, you know. Of course, the depth of the fear and, yes, even despair that millions of us felt as the results of the General Elections to the 16th Lok Sabha came slamming down, the completeness of the rout suffered by India’s Grand Old Party on May 16, 2014, the sense of helplessness, is still vivid. There were times when I wanted to curl into a fetal ball and spend my life for the next five years in a state of suspended animation, so discouraged did I feel, so hopeless. Then the rage and anger kicked in of course. (Be warned, there will be more ‘of courses’ coming). So gradually that we hardly noticed it, we began to care.
Earlier, the same millions were barely sentient about politics, the Lok Sabha hovering at the edge of consciousness, its shenanigans unrelated to our daily lives. Huge swathes of our own countrymen barely made it to our minds once a year. This is still especially true of those of us who live in the bigger cities and the metros.
As for rallies and our own participation in them – the usual question to whether we would be attending was always met with a derisive “mad or wot?” Thankfully, the “wot” seems to have the winning edge, brought home to our consciousness in many ways.
Three weeks ago, it was the price of onions. “Didi”, said my driver, “you know what onions cost now? Ten rupees,” he said. I grunted and waited for the tiny, self-congratulatory notes to creep into his next pronouncement. They didn’t. Instead he said, “It must be tough for the farmers”. I know for a fact that he is also very sorry for small business owners, the drought in the villages, members of his community subjected to lynching everywhere and the result of every bypoll in the country.
For the great middle class, which apparently comprises seekers and strivers (according to the NCAER Report 2010), the benefits of the present regime have definitely been mixed. On the one hand, there is the short-lived satisfaction of consuming at different levels – from groceries in laden supermarkets ripe with “offers” to on-line shopping which exposes one to absolute needs that were non-existent earlier.
But what stays in the mind now is the look on the faces of the bhajiwallas and the newly-discovered reluctance to bargain for a few rupees in the face of real and continuing deprivation among those who work our land to load our tables. You watch a hand-cart puller being pushed along by his assistant, carrying an enormous load on roads clogged with traffic and angry people and you know how he feels. You are asked for money to buy water for participants in the latest Farmers’ March and you fork out thankfully, your mind full of images of bleeding and blistered feet, parched fields and faces filled with resignation and suffering.
Voting is no longer something other people do while you rush off on a short holiday over a long weekend. Democracy and freedom have never seemed so precious. Best of all, there is this connection over politics which has retaken its pace as the centre of our lives this vast, beautiful, country of ours.
So we have been watching the ruling parties’ dwindling numbers in the Lok Sabha, and the overall picture has changed, from seemingly indestructible to very “vincible”. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not a word. But this year, who knows, it could be. So just leave it alone. Anything is possible.
