Heat 038; Stardust

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The campaign trail in India is dotted with magicians and soothsayers, cellphones and Sumos, satta bazaar addicts, film stars, giants, and the occasional blood bank.

In Jaipur, the streets in Hawa Mahal constituency are lit with floodlights and hung with balloons and buntings. Hema Malini is on stage, screaming, 8216;8216;Chal Dhanno, Basanti ki laaj rakh!8217;8217; The air smells of jalebi and chana jor, the shamiana is frayed and the stage is rickety, creakily holding up the weight of the stately political personages assembled on stage: MLAs, local dadas and party workers. Garlands are piled in a basket at the foot of the stage, Bollywood remixes pump out from loudspeakers: Main aee hoon Rajasthan lootne is being sung with brazen tunelessness. Hema Malini whirrs off in the chopper and Vasundhara arrives again, the crowds are meagre but they hang from narrow houses like lengths of twisted rope. She sets herself down on a giant, treacherously swinging tarazu and is weighed against tomatoes, weighed against potatoes, weighed in ladoos and weighed in bottles of blood. Party workers swarm around.

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Campaign trails are overrun with karyakartas or party workers. In fact, it is the feverish energy of these headband-wearing, hot-eyed youth who ride around the countryside in their open jeeps, which fuels the campaign trail. The party worker is the pivot of the Indian election: He is the party8217;s presence in the field, he drums up voters, organises rallies and rounds up the required number of hoodlums. Back in 8217;96 when Madhavrao Scindia went zooming around Gwalior in his Gypsy, he was forced to stop every two minutes by crowds of garland-waving party workers. Every worker had to be hugged, thanked and his garlands accepted. Or else8230;

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Raja and praja come face to face on the Indian campaign trail. In the 8217;98 elections, when the single-malt sipping, Mick Jagger buddy Navin Patnaik went vote hunting in his constituency, Aska, in southern Orissa, bare-bodied Neolithic-chic women and bison-horned hunter-gatherers stood by patiently while he confessed how intimately he identified with their concerns. A single black buck stood in still silhouette on low dark hills, a semi-clothed crowd pressed closer and closer, streaming out from straw-thatched huts, while Patnaik rushed through his speech on schools and hospitals in record time and escaped to his Sumo to hastily inhale his 555 and speed away to his favourite hotel, miles away, in the seaside resort of Gopalpur-on-Sea.

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In the same year, when Samajwadi Party MP Salim Sherwani went campaigning in his constituency Badayun in central UP, leaping onto makeshift stages surrounded by cattle and buffaloes, his spotlessly white kurta and pyjama contrasted sharply with his shabby surroundings. Scion of the family that owns Geep, election meetings in tiny roadside villages became a list of negotiations during Sherwani8217;s campaign, each local grievance listed and dealt with by Sherwani and his deputies, like a CEO might run through a checklist. Raja and praja may inhabit different worlds, but they were not divided by mutual suspicion. Instead the verdict from the voters of rural Badayun was, 8216;8216;Jiska pet bhara hua hai, wahi doosron ka pet bhar sakta hai.8217;8217;

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Campaign trails are snatches of gastronomic indulgence in days and nights of relentless, exhausting travel. Sherwani ate in style. In his company guest house to which he ricocheted back from rural sojourns, there were kebabs, parathas, pulao and chicken curry, accompanied by hot rotis and aachar. Before dinner, there had been omelettes, sweets and buttered toast. In these elections, Uma Bharti campaigned every night until 2 am, but survived to cook aloo ki sabzi and dal for visiting journalists. Lunch time with Vasundhara Raje was superb, served in grand monarchical style on huge silver thalis with delicate katoris marching around the edges like a small royal regiment. In the party office, en fete with flags and life-size portraits, amateur psephologists, chartered accountants, tycoons, astrologers, journalists and the grumbling old guard of the RSS feasted on four types of veggies, wholegrain roti, tarka dal, pulao and mountains of syrupy jalebi. Vasundhara nibbled on small idlis spiced with mint and sighed that the dal wasn8217;t sambhar.

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Campaign trails are hectic laugh-a-minute rides. Haring down with Uma Bharti from rally to rally, she stopped off to suddenly feed an elephant. Tripping delicately with Sheila Dikshit down genteel Khan Market, she paused in mid-manifesto speech to buy a VCD, only to be sternly told by her media managers that she musn8217;t be seen shopping at work. Ashok Gehlot kept up a breakneck speed, his chopper taking off seconds after his speech ended, while he roundly scolded the crowd to kindly shut up so he could get on with his bhaashan in the scheduled time.

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On campaign trails, dirt tracks and highways come alive with lurching Ambassadors and Sumos, the sky buzzes with choppers, a journalist must jump from train to car and back to train to keep up with the whizzing netajis. A panoply of folk performers rises from the shadows: the magician in Chhattisgarh who can create ballot papers out of trash; the 8 ft tall giant who helped the Congress campaign in MP; the bairagis from Punjab who sang Bulhe Shah8217;s songs to impassive crowds in Ganganagar.

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In the paper-strewn, fruit-stall lined streets of the old city in Jaipur, there are competitive rallies, just a few yards away from each other, by Congress and BJP. There is a war of loudspeakers as volumes are turned up to ear-splitting decibels. Pushing through the crowded street comes a giant float on a decorated truck. A brightly painted cardboard female deity, half-film star, half-goddess, is fixed on the bonnet and lit by fairy lights. The deity8217;s arms are outstretched, as if to say, this is an Indian election, welcome one, welcome all!