Mani"The Moving Finger votes; and having voted Moves on; nor all thy Ideology nor Writ Shall lure it back to concede half a Chance, Nor all thy Tears wash out a NOTA from it.” [with apologies to the estate of Omar Khayyam]
Just a fortnight to go, O gentle Reader, for the Sacred Day of June 4th — which will mark the grand culmination of the greatest of festivals that Democratic India has gifted to the world… Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas!
For those among us who might be unfamiliar with India’s glorious heritage and culture, Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas roughly translates from the ancient Indian language of Tapori Hindi to ‘Day to Show Politician the Finger’.
It is such an appropriately named festival as we traverse the Digital Age, no?
It is the Day We Show Politicians a Digit.
Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas is a beautiful festival, even by India’s stellar standards of sublime secular celebration. It is observed once every five years and lasts for many weeks, depending on the Lunatic Calendar.
This time the festivities last for a full 44 days, starting from 19th April and ending on 4st June 2024.
This Holy Period is marked not by austere fasts, but instead by joyous and frenzied public revelry throughout the nation, with intermittent region-wise climaxes—called Electoral Days by the intelligentsia and Electoral Dysfunction Days by the irreverent and irrelevant—when We the Wee People troop to our local Electoral Shrines to observe the Hallowed and Powerful Ritual of the Forefinger, our brains numbed by six weeks of incessant, insensitive and incendiary sloganeering, our spirits buoyed by the giga-litres of free ethylated spirits and other heady gifts and freebees distributed among us by the Powers-That-Be who comprise both rulers and the aspiring-rulers of Bharat that is India .
Ahhh! How eagerly I await May 25th, fingers a-twitching in unholy excitement, to take my turn in celebrating this greatest of ancient Indian festivals.
May 25th 2024 is Electoral Day for us Dilli-wallahs.
It is the day I shall sally forth with my co-sufferers in the sweltering Capital, most likely around 07:30 a.m when it is a cool and pleasant 105 degrees F in the shade, to queue up at the designated Electoral Shrine and have my forefinger anointed with Holy Ink by the solemn Presiding Priests and Priestesses and take my turn in the quiet, curtained sanctum sanctorum to choose one name from among the dozen scoundrels, scallywags, assorted crooks and scamsters who seek my vote that might help them become one of the 543 Members of Parliament who will misgovern India for the next five years.
Oh, please don’t get me wrong…I love Lok Sabha Elections.
I love Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas!
I also love the Exit Polls that take over every media channel and newspaper from the moment the last vote is cast—from the evening of June 1st, that is! This year, I’m going to binge-watch at least five different Indian TV news channels— and also monitor leading and misleading Indian and international online news portals of impeccable disrepute such as The Wire, BBC, New York Times, The Dawn, and The People’s Daily—to chortle non-stop at their wildly diverse ‘analyses’ and predictions as to which political party or alliance is going to emerge as the winner.
And when Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas dawns…June 4th… Oooooohh! Awwwwkkk!
Already, I tremble in anticipation of getting a year’s worth of mirth and merriment from morning to night as I watch and listen to anxious anchors, earnest experts, jaded journalists, pontificating psephologists and affiliated pretenders yap away non-stop as the numbers and results come in from across the country; numbers and results that will invariably differ exponentially from all their painstakingly presented pre-poll and exit poll predictions.
And my chuckles will explode into belly-aching roars of laughter and I will double over and and shake and dance in ecstasy in front of the TV screen—and perhaps waggle my Holy Ink-anointed finger and wiggle my non-Holy Ink-anointed butt in their collective faces for good measure—as they explain how in fact they actually got all their predictions right, and how it is that We, the Wee People, must take the blame for not voting according to their analyses and predictions.
I look forward to chortling over brave explanatory phrases like these from the Talking Heads on TV, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter and other boob-tubes:
“…Thus, our forecasts were absolutely spot-on! The variance from actual results is only because our correctly predicted swing factor towards the Secular I.N.D.I.A Coalition in North Indian states has been counter-balanced by the last-minute counter-oscillation of Backwards towards the Hindutva-inclined BJP, though of course this in turn has been somewhat mitigated by the usual Koeri-Kurmi antipathy toward the Right-leaning Thakurs, the Centrist Yadavs, and Left-leaning EBCs and Muslims…”
“As you can see from this graphic, our predictions that the Congress would sweep Uttar Pradesh with 75–80 seats were 100% accurate. The fact that they’ve actually won only 3 seats is entirely due to the urban and peri-urban electorate’s incremental wooing by the BJP through excremental programs like Swacchh Bharat Abhiyaan…”
“The sweep by BJP in Delhi has nothing to do with the AAP broom. It is directly a result of the complex interplay between the policy paralysis of the AAP government with over 60% of its Cabinet Ministers in Tihar Jail, and the mid-election Maliwal–Kejriwal– Sheesh Mahal –Ghotalay Golmal, combined with the overall Maha-Dalit–Bhumihar consolidation against I.N.D.I.A in NCR region and the Adi Dravid-Tamil Brahmin groups in Tamil Nadu against the DMK…”
“To put it in plain and simple language: the results only underline the deep inroads carved into the superstructure of Indian democracy by the enduring Brahmanical Hegemony that, strengthened by communal agendas and catalysed by the institutionalization of Comprador agencies masquerading as pseudo-Right Liberal entities, have promoted exploitative neo-Capitalist policy frameworks and schemes which have historically been proven to be contrapuntal to the interests of the oppressed subaltern sections of society…”
O precious Reader, please do pardon my feeble efforts above: these are mere examples, pale imitations of the turgid, hilarious phrases that we will actually get to hear from the learned Talking Heads who will analyse the poll results for us, from June 4th till the next Lok Sabha elections.
Ahh! It is at times like this that I miss those supremely entertaining Talking Heads of yesteryear: those masters and mistresses of gobbledygook whose names most of us have forgotten… like Purana Roy, Khadka Butt, Saregama the Ghost, et al…
But then, we still have the likes of Roger Deep- Sordid Sai, Hardknob Gowshala and Nervy Cuckoomar to regale us as we track the poll outcomes up to and even beyond Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas…to Gaali Diwas.
Gaali Diwas!
The Day of Swearing-In!
Gaali Diwas is the day the newly-appointed Prime Minister and his/her chosen Ministers take their oaths and are sworn in to their respective orifi…er…offices.
Going by its name, Gaali Diwas should be the day when you and I should be given the opportunity to attend the swearing-in rituals personally so that we can swear and hurl oaths and abuse at the newly-appointed Prime Minister and his chosen Ministers as they take their oaths. Particularly, if they are not the leaders we voted for.
However, this requires reform in the Law.
I am confident that the Leader for whom I am going to vote will bring in the necessary reform to allow the public this wonderful and indeed fundamental right to free fundamentalist expression.
I shall pray for such an outcome on May 25th, when I visit my Electoral Shrine and vote.
“Bollocks!” exclaims the Resident Lizard, rudely interrupting my flow of thoughts.
The Resident Lizard has crept up on me silently, like a predatory Aam Aadmi Party leader in Kejriwal’s Sheesh Mahal, and is reading over my shoulder as I write. It is a most annoying habit (his reading over my shoulder, I mean, not my writing).
“If your Chosen Leader becomes Prime Minister, you wouldn’t want to swear at him,” my reptilian colleague adds with his typical cussed logic. “So what’s the point of your Chosen Prime Minister bringing in a reform that allows you to swear at him when he’s being sworn in, when you’re anyway not going to swear at him?”
Infuriated, I throw a priceless crystal cup, a wireless mouse, a printer cartridge, my reading glasses case and three pens at the Lizard. All miss their target; but he skilfully extracts the reading glasses from the case, dons them with a sardonic chuckle and scuttles off to the living room to read the newspaper.
I regain my composure; I realize I must tolerate the Resident Lizard’s presence and his views.
After all, he too, awaits Netako Ungli Dikhana Diwas.
And so, I conclude this herewith before joining him in the living room.
Hail the spirit of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam.
Jai Hind!
[Dedicated to a dear young socio-anthropologist friend who – unlike so many politicians – loves to work among the people for the people, loves merriment and well-being and peace, loves Life (though not lizards of any kind so much)…and yes, loves the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam 🙂]
Wanderings and Wonderings 