A Second Chance!

The Election Results were announced on the 16th. Six days later, on the 22nd, the first of the swearings-in took place at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In the audience, among hundreds of bejewelled women and sherwani-wrapped men, were Youth Congress President and (fingers crossed) future Prime Minister of India, Rahul Gandhi, his brother-in-law and sister Priyanka. The ceremony started at 6:33 pm and lasted till 7:15 pm. Dr. Manmohan Singh was the first to take oath. Since I had never before watched a swearing-in ceremony with such attention, I discovered that there were two different kinds of oaths from which one could choose; one which required you to "swear in the name of God" and another which required you to "solemnly affirm". Both the oaths came in Hindi or English. Apart from the Prime Minister, 19 Ministers too oath. Their portfolios had yet been declared but there was talk that P. Chidambaram would be shifted to Home, Pranab Mukherjee given Finance, Sharad Pawar Agriculture and most exciting of all for the people of Bengal Mamata Banerjee would be given Railways. She was! I used to think life never gave you a second chance. Apparently life can be astonishingly generous sometimes. This was the Ministry which she had only a few years ago as Minister in the-then BJP-led Govt. Barely a year into her term, she had stunned and dismayed the nation by suddenly resigning. The image of her being a little touched in the head got stuck to her. Now is her chance to prove that she is not the madwoman in the static. If she simply does her job well, that will in itself be her 2011 state election campaign. Like most people in this state I wish her a cool head.

Didi Dum Dum Didi Dum Dum

On the day that results were to be announced I didn't bother to wake up early and station myself in front of the television because I had no great hopes. It was only when I went downstairs and found a Bengali channel in the sitting room announcing a spectacular lead for the Trinamul-Congress combine that I realized something major was happening. As the day wore on the extent of people's anger against the Left started becoming delightfully clear. Then at 4:10 pm or so, our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (how can I not be proud of this self-effacing, soft-spoken, extremely well-behaved man?) and Congress President Sonia Gandhi (who for me personifies quiet dignity and good taste) appeared in front of live television cameras to acknowledge the fact that the nation had given a clear verdict in their favour. I had to take a picture of that moment, not only for the image but also for the extraordinary ticker under it: "Mamata, Congress Beat Left in West Bengal"! Didi had not only taken Kolkata North (my Constituency), but Kolkata South, Jadavpur, DumDum, Barrackpore and fourteen other constituencies! Congress had taken some too, bringing the total to a spectacular 26! So how far were these figures from the ones bandied about my various exit polls? According to the CPI(M)-funded channel Chobbish Ghonta the Left was to win 28 seats and the Trinamul-Congress combine an unthreatening 13. (Their figures were the almost exact reverse of the actual results!!) NDTV gave the Left 22 and Trinamul-Congress, 19. Some other channels had given TMC-Congress between 19 and 20 seats and the Left between 22 to 23. Nobody had foreseen the Left being cut down to size with a victory in a measly 15 constituencies. This only means that most people surveyed had lied about who they would vote for. Good for them!! I always believed lying is underrated!:-)

The next morning when I went out to buy the papers, not ONE Bengali paper was available. Thank God my father had bought an Anandabazar Patrika, or I would have NO Bengali paper to save as souvenir of that historic morning.

Dum Dum Didi Dum Dum

What a General Election this has been! Exciting and historic enough to force me out of my stupor and get me blogging again! As I write this, just outside my window I can see the terrace of a nighbour's house from where three small Trinamul flags are flying and I still can't believe my eyes! Used as these 42-year-old eyes are to the ubiquitous white-on-red hammer-and-sickle, somehow the astonishing upset in the fortunes of the party that has ruled this state simply through corruption and nepotism for the last 32 years, still hasn't sunk in. But perhaps, I somewhere had hopes that this time things may change. Which is why I had decided to take a picture or two of Sudip Bandopadhyay when he passed by our house on 7th April. The man he was up against, Md. Salim, was so smugly confident of his victory that he didn't bother to drive through our low profile lane. As I leaned from my balcony, Mr. Bandopadhyay looked up from his open-top white jeep (with his name written under the windscreen) and flashed me a victory sign. I smiled.

On Election Day in Kolkata, 13th May, I cast my vote along with my father and sister at around 9:30 am. My politically-disinterested mom was forced out of the house by Dad late in the afternoon to cast her vote! She did!