‘Come, sir, come, see voting for yourself’

The threat of widespread and bloddy sabotage triggered from across the menaced borders had largely remained a threat. Allegations that the uniformed guns within would coax and coerce remained, by and large, allegations. And betwixt the two stories that did not happen today, lay the many shades of Kashmir’s consistently grey story.

What the visitor-watchers from the West made of it they would not tell. But then, it’s a task even for Kashmiris to make anything of this story, leave alone outsiders.

In Sopore, for instance, we ran into a curfew that nobody had imposed but everybody was observing. The town lay brooding indoors; dogs and jackboots patrolled the sullen emptiness.

Two hours into the vote, a single ballot had been cast in the home booth of Abdul Ahad Vakil, National Conference (NC) candidate and Speaker of the state assembly.

American and European officials by far outnumbered voters at the polling station. ‘‘Only officials,’’ quipped one of them making a quick exit, ‘‘but nothing official about this poll.’’

Yet, less than 20 miles down the trail in Pattan where Welfare Minister Iftikhar Hussain Ansari is fighting long incumbency and the Congress’ Abdul Ahad Yitoo, polling stations got busy early. And, unlike 1996, it was not the men in khaki shepherding people to the booths under the gun; they were being brought there, as in any Indian election, by Ansari’s men and Yitoo’s, on foot, in autorickshaws and tongas, in minibuses.

A gaggle of youngsters stood at the gates of one polling centre in the Pattan countryside, lush and burnished now with ripening paddy. They burst into pyrhhic waves of azadi slogans every time they saw a foreign face or a television camera. But today, they were a sideshow like at many places in the Valley; the jawans let them shout their slogans and spout their anti-election bytes, the voting rolled on.

‘‘Many of us have even voted,’’ shouted one of the youngsters in the azaadi crowd, affirming there was a touch of farce to the platform he had chosen, ‘‘But we have been forced. This is a joke, no harm participating.’’

In neighbouring Gulmarg, where Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah’s younger brother Mustafa Kamal is locked in an uphill battle against Ghulam Hassan Mir of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), the mood was verily festive. There was a battle on in the village of Chandiloora on the approach to Gulmarg, but not of the kind the foreign visitor might have come expecting.

It was a battle between rival voices of democracy, between polling agents of the NC and the PDP. ‘‘Your leaders have established a dynasty here and taken people for a ride. You said you will build a Naya Kashmir, you have not even built a road. We are going to oust you this time,’’ the PDP man was saying.

‘‘Don’t underestimate the might and popularity of Sheikh Abdullah’s party,’’ the NC man retorted, ‘‘Nobody has done as much for Kashmir as the Abdullahs.’’

The lanky European, notebook in hand and eyes studiously on the double queue heckling itself into the polling booth, stood there a little baffled at what all the sound and the fury might have been about. ‘‘What, what are they saying?’’ he asked around, ‘‘Is there someone here who is protesting abot these elections?’’

‘‘No, sir, no,’’ came a reassuring voice from the crowd, ‘‘There is no quarrel about elections, they are only arguing about who will win.’’

There was nothing in the small picture at the Chandiloora polling station that would have helped the European to the big picture he had come carting to the Valley: the worrisome Indo-Pak tensions, the spectre of nuclear war, the more insistent spectre of global terrorism and conflict.

The conflict breaking out in front of him was about poor roads and non-existent governance, it was about one strange little party flag seeking upmanship over another strange little party flag. But his bafflement was to unravel further as he ventured into the polling booth, waving his laminated Election Commission card finding himself utterly welcome.

This was no polling booth as he may have known it, no orderly secret ballot. This was nothing like the most crucial election in the world; this was more like a convivial club vote. The room was full of people who did not need to be there. But they were there anyhow, watching, as our European friend was. And nobody but him seemed to notice something was not happening in order.

‘‘There are people and there is voting sir, see, see yourself,’’ the polling officer smiled at him. It was a hilarious moment. The diplomat thought the officer should have been embarrassed about the atmosphere in the room; the officer thought the diplomat was about to pin a medallion on his breast for smooth conduct of polls. ‘‘Come sir, come, see for yourself,’’ he chortled on in self-congratulatory tone.

The mother-board of the electronic voting machine and the voting contraption both lay side by side on the same table. All there was to protect the privacy of the vote from everyone else in the room was a bit of cardboard torn carelessly off a Colgate Tootpaste carton.

Not that that piece of cardboard worked. The voter was asked who he was voting and the voter obediently answered and was helped to the button of his choice. On the drive back to Srinagar, the diplomat may have wondered whether he should call this an utterly transparent election. In a sense he would have been right to do that.