She gives me company during all the saas bahu serials. Language is a big barrier, but she is there for the Travel and Living shows as well. She is forced to watch Twenty20, when the entire family (except for me) is glued to the TV. And she doesn’t mind. But July 23 proved to be the most entertaining day for this teenage girl from a remote adivasi village in Phalakata. Interrupting a routine channel-surfing session by my husband, a smile lit up her face as she told him not to switch channels. “Yahan bahut hasate hain,” she said, looking at me for approval. My husband and I couldn’t agree more. It was one of the top journalists in the country commenting on the day’s happenings during the trust vote. The commentary was going on with visuals of the parliament proceedings in the background.Ajita hadn’t seen the world beyond her tin shed in her Jalpaigudi home until 10 months ago. Her only form of entertainment then was a peek into her neighbour’s house when the TV was on in the evenings. For her, Sonia Gandhi was a “sundar” woman and Manmohan Singh, “Sardarji”. I told her the people there were “netas”, but failed to make her understand that this is how they take important decisions for the country. For her, they were having fun and making people laugh. She found Lalu Prasad very amusing and asked me why the speaker kept getting annoyed. I didn’t want to shatter her idea of governance, which for her is voting for those who will do society the larger good. I didn’t want to kill the notion that the person her mother votes for will make no difference to her life as a worker in a tea estate. I didn’t want to tell her that she might go home to find her younger sister, aged 10, whom she desperately wants to be literate, being sent away to do manual labour. I didn’t want to tell her that Kalawati, a woman like the thousands in her village, had been made a “star” for a day of news. I didn’t want to tell her, that for her family and for millions of people like her, this “circus” is not going to in any way change their lives. Not for good, at least.
