Exit PollsThe most boring, long-drawn-out, meaningless, expensive and slanderous election campaign that the country has ever witnessed has wound to an end and one can only be grateful that it is well and truly over. So here are a few ruminations to celebrate a culmination most devoutly wished for. Like, if this had gone on for much longer, people may have dropped brain-dead in front of their TV sets and then what would the Election Commission have done? Like, isn't it amazing how these characters seeking to be elected will do everything to grab your vote and nothing after they have got it? Like, they've gone and blown up Rs 850 crore on this election and isn't that a great deal of money to spend so that the same old rascals get to play the same old tricks on us? Like, if they can have a threshold for radioactivity levels, why can't they devise a similar one for poll promises - so that people can be warned that exposure beyond a certain level is known to cause severedamage to the central nervous system? Like, shouldn't there be some ecologically-friendly way of putting all that election gas to productive use like harnessing it to run power plants or something? Like, we should be happy that we are getting more prosperous over the years - or at least the politicians among us. Earlier, politicians would hire Ambassadors and Sumos in order to campaign, now they hire helicopters instead. Like, I don't know about you, but my most favoured constituency in these elections is Chaibasa, in south Bihar, where all the three main contenders, representing the BJP, the Congress and the JMM, are equally well-qualified - they all have criminal track records. Like, I don't know about you, but I feel these elections conclusively proved that we Indians still believe in old-fashioned family values, going by the numerous betas and betis, bahus and biwis, chachas and chachis in the fray. Like, although the Congress claimed thatthere was a wave in its favour, ditto the BJP, the only waves that I could discern were the ones that Sonia Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajapayee kept flashing at us from various podiums. Like, the BJP should be grateful that the elections ended when they did, going by the way their electoral planks kept disintegrating and their seat tally in exit polls kept dwindling. First, the Ram Mandir was kept in cold storage. Then the bus to Lahore got punctured by Kargil gunfire. Then Kargil got punctured by over-kill. Finally, the much-trumpeted Cauvery Accord got drowned in Karnataka's stormy waters. Like, it did seem that what our politicians lack in perspicacity, they make up in invective and that the Election Commission had better seriously consider getting Asha Parekh to monitor the electoral frays of the future. Like, I don't know about you, but I can't decide which diatribe wins the ``Magnificent Mud Pie Award 99''. Let's see. There was Pramod Mahajan calling Jayalalitha a vishkanya, andJayalalitha calling George Fernandes an LTTE agent. There was George Fernandes calling Sonia Gandhi a mother of two and little else, and Vishnu Bhagwat calling George Fernandes a traitor to the country. There was the Congress calling the BJP traitors for importing Pakistani sugar, and the BJP calling the Congress traitors for not supporting it on Kargil. There was Jyoti Basu calling Mamata Banerjee a 420 and Mamata calling Basu something worse than a 420. There was a senior BJP functionary calling Sonia Gandhi a bar girl and Ghulam Nabi Azad revealing that Vajpayee was not quite a bachelor. There was Karunanidhi implying that Jayalalitha was no better than a dancing girl and Pramod Mahajan implying that Sonia was no better than Monica Lewinsky. Phew!There was the BJP chanting slogans like Kiska desh, kiski baat, videshi nagarikon ko maro laat (whose nation, whose talk, give the foreign lady one kick). And there was the Congress screaming Jo ghar nahi basa saka voh desh ko kya bachayega? (howcan one who couldn't set up his house save the country?).On and on it went, the insults, abuse, invectives and slander. Was it any surprise then that nobody had any breath left to talk about the issues that mattered? Like, no matter whom we voted for or supported, it is a foregone conclusion that we will all live to regret the choice.
