A ticket to the polls

It was past midnight, but there were still about half a dozen candidates left. They waited patiently in a room adjoining the dining area of ...

It was past midnight, but there were still about half a dozen candidates left. They waited patiently in a room adjoining the dining area of the flat, where two heavyweight observers detailed by the state unit of a political party were conducting the interviews. The people in the waiting room were kept totally in the dark about what went on in there. Every now and then, the secretary of the local party unit would call out a name, and then the door would be shut tight behind him.

Only the boy who served tea had access. And of course Sethji, an influential businessman who had spent his life playing host to visiting VIPs of the party, had privileged access. The candidates resented this because this time round, Sethji’s son had also applied for a ticket. It was a conflict of interest situation and suspicion brewed freely in the room where the candidates were corralled. Said Sethji’s worst critics: "Who knows, this old fox may even have installed secret cameras in the interview room."

A stream of local delegations had also been brought in by aspiring candidates as part of a huge stage-managed lobbying operation. They had taken up the time of the observers and delayed the interview process.

Finally, when the interviews did start up late at night, the candidates would protest if the observers lingered over anyone. The observers, in their turn, insisted they could not be bound to a schedule. After all, they weren’t conducting job interviews. They had to find the right man to stand on the party’s ticket in the constituency.

The candidates who had already been interviewed refused to go away. The word had gone around that they might be invited to dinner with the observers afterwards, where a group photograph would be taken, and they had decided to take it seriously.

Meanwhile, they were playing their cards close to the chest, refusing to reveal what they had been asked at the interview. But my friend Bhola, a candidate who had taken me along for moral support, spilled the beans to me the moment he was out of the room. "Setting yourself aside, who do you think is the best candidate?" they had asked him. "How would you react if we selected someone else? How much can you donate to the party fund?"

Bhola had freely admitted that he was up against tough competition — the sitting MLA was also a minister. But it was money and muscle power which decided elections, and he was quite well provided for in these areas. Besides, he had the lung power to drown out the competition in the Assembly.

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For the noble purpose of booth-capturing, he had already engaged the services of one Hi-tler, the local dada, a fitting match for Stalin, who handled such matters for the rival party. But the observers gave Bhola shocking news. According to their intelligence, Hitler and Stalin had become close relatives. "Yesterday, Hitler’s son and Stalin’s daughter tied the knot."

Meanwhile, the candidates left over were amusing themselves. One supporter, a Sikh NRI, wore a foreign-made wristwatch which gave him blood pressure, pulse rate and ECG readouts. It was good fun, and every candidate started taking readouts before and after their interviews. Sometimes, its display read, Relax’, prompting loud, rustic laughter. Occasionally, it rang a continuous alarm, indicating that all was not well with a candidate.

In the wee hours, the observers heaved a sigh of relief as they saw out the last candidate. But their ordeal was not over. A wrestler from a nearby village insisted on being interviewed, though his name was not on the list. He claimed to have mailed his application. When, and to whom? He did not remember.

It was time for breakfast when the observers finally left, tired, sleepy and visibly confused. Probably, to them, every candidate had begun to look like a potential dissident.