Battle for Bittora

by Anuja Chauhan

  'Welcome back,' he said approvingly. He'd always been a patriotic, live-in-India type. 'And your job - is it fun?'

  I laughed, a little sarcastically. 'Oh, it's a total blast. I animate kitaanus all day. And what do you do when you 're not barbequing at weddings?'

  'I'm an engineer,' he said. At least, I have a degree in environmental engineering. What do you mean, you animate kitaanus?'

  I sighed.

  'Have you seen all those creepy, computer-animated germs inside toilet bowls in ads for Harpic and Domex?'

  'You make those?'

  'Yeah.' I nodded.

  'No superheroes?' he asked, just the slightest trace of laughter in his voice.

  'No,' I said, my cheeks very red. 'What do you make, anyway?'

  Now he looked really amused.

  'Oh, I make enough,' he said smugly. 'Didn't you ever google me?'

  'No,' I replied. 'You dropped clean out of my life and out of my mind.'

  He grinned. 'I bet you did.'

  'I bet you did!' I returned.

  He laughed so hard he spluttered sherbat all over the railing.

  (Lean, taut, chiselled and honey gold.)

  I ignored him, adjusted my pallu and looked around the garden in what I hoped was a queenly manner.

  'When can we meet again?' he asked abruptly.

  I shook my head, saying nothing. Things were going a little too fast here.

  He leaned in and said in an urgent undertone, 'Would you relax? Please? And regarding... um...' he waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the study, 'that... can I just say, I'm really sorry if I came on too strong.' He paused, his forehead lining up again, a lock of dark hair falling into his eyes. 'Wait, scratch that, actually. Why am I saying I'm sorry? I'm not sorry at all!'

  He stood there frowning, like this was some momentous discovery.

  Then the sudden grin flashed.

  'Are you sorry ?' he said.

  I felt my cheeks go hot.

  'Yes,' I said decidedly.

  He winced. 'You're always too quick to say you're sorry, Jinni,' he complained. 'It's the most irritating thing about you.'

  'I have a generous nature,' I retorted. 'Unlike you, who sulks for days... or months... or years'

  'Well, I'm not sulking anymore,' he said lightly. 'Say you'll meet me again, Kaka Nagar. C'mon.'

  I shook my head and began to speak, but we were interrupted once again - this time by Amma, who barrelled in on our deserted island like an oil tanker, foghorns blowing.

  She grabbed me by the arm and hissed peremptorily, 'Sarojini! Come with us. Now.'

  But I swung her around to face Zain.

  'Amma, guess who this is!' I said excitedly. 'Go on, guess! You'll never guess!'

  A rather weird silence followed, while Zain looked at Amma and Amma looked at Zain. For at least three minutes.

  'Adaab,' he said finally, formally, one hand going to his chest. He wasn't stand-offish exactly, but he didn't smile, and his fine nostrils flared a little. Well, the way things had ended back then, I couldn't have expected him to fall into her lap and start kissing the inside of her wrist or anything - but hey, he'd just claimed that he wasn't sulking any more.

  'Haan haan, hello,' said Amma grudgingly. Her benevolent politician smile did an extremely brief, blink-and-you-miss-it flit across her face. 'Sarojini, come!'

  And with that she dragged me away! I tell you, that's why I have such a pathetic love life. My family is like a social millstone around my neck.

  I tried to protest, but she hissed 'Enough!' and marched me to the car, smiling and nodding and folding her hands in farewell to everybody we encountered on the way, her grip on my upper arm as unyielding as steel.

  When we reached the car, she snapped at the driver to go take a walk, and then got in. I got in after her and she reached over and banged the door shut.

  Amma, what is wrong with you? That was Zain! How could you be so rude?'

  She snorted loudly.

  I pushed the hair off my face and continued. 'I know you're really tense nowadays, but that was so uncalled for! Especially when,' a new thought entered my head, 'hey, especially when he could've campaigned for you and everything!'

  She snorted again. Louder. More ominously.

  'You know, you could totally asphyxiate yourself if you keep doing that,' I told her. 'Stop it.'

  Silence. I think she was gnashing her teeth in the dark.

  I said, a little worried now, 'What is it, Amma? Is it the ticket? Oh god, have you not got it?'

  'Yes,' she said flatly. 'We have not got it.'

  'Oh no, Amma,' I said, sickened at the disappointment she must be feeling.

  Reaching out, I put my arms around her stiff little body and started babbling out the soothing speech I'd been preparing for a week. 'Listen, it's probably a blessing in disguise anyway. The Pragati is going to lose that seat. It's way too much of an uphill task after the mess Dwivedi's made of everything. I've got a great idea. Let's just screw all this. We'll go to Canada for a holi-'

  She pushed me away. Hard. Really hard.

  Then she said, her voice throbbing with emotion, 'You have got it.'

  'Sorry, what?'

  She said, just to make it clearer, so that there could be no mistake, 'You are standing on the Pragati Party ticket!'

  My heart plummeted, like a boulder in slow motion, right through my stomach.

  I stared at her, my head spinning.

  'And that ij not all,' she continued, her voice extremely bitter, you wanted to know na, who the IJP is fielding? Well, open your yearj and listen! It ij that puppy, that too-much eating, always-coming pilla, your great childhood friend, that over-smart, over-educated Zain Altaf Khan!'

  ***

  3

  We drove home in complete silence. I tried to get Amma to talk to me, but she just waggled her eyebrows violently, indicating the driver in the front seat, and shushed me into silence. So I sat back, watched the old neem trees of Lutyens' Delhi whiz past, and tried to make sense of what she had said.

  It was insane - much too insane to be true - but it had to be true; Amma wouldn't make up such a story. I stepped gingerly around the proof of Zain's perfidy - watch out for Frenemies, Rumi had said, and reluctantly I saluted him - and zoomed into the issue that affected me the most at this current moment. My candidature.

  'How come,' I asked Amma finally, choosing my words carefully, very aware of the driver in front, 'they picked... uh, you know... who they picked?'

  She snorted. 'How do we know?' she said. 'We don't claim to know what goes on inside the minds of the mad men who run the IJP!'

  I shook my head. 'No, I meant - in your party, Amma.'

  'Alwayj thinking about yourself,' she said, somewhat unfairly.

  I didn't say anything.

  The silence between us deepened, but finally, she sighed and said, massaging her ear lobe, 'The newj came when we were eating - that the IJP had announced the pilla's name from Bittora. It waj quite a sok for all of us - you look in front!' This to the poor driver, who hadn't even glanced our way.

  The hapless man instantly hunched over the wheel in a desperate bid to appear invisible. Amma burned holes through his back for a while, then threw up her hands, shrugged and exclaimed fatalistically, 'Oh, what doej it matter? It ij all public knowledge now, anyway!'

  Then she turned back to me and started to spill.

  'Anyway, so TB immediately said that we must get a young candidate to stand also. Then somebody suggested Tawny's son's name.'

  'The Rapist? No way!'

  She ignored me. 'We pretended to agree with the suggestion. It ij only polite, and poor Tawny ij aawar friend, after all. But of course, we were already thinking of you. So when TB said, quite snappily, ki wajn't there any other candidate besides the son of the AIPC General Secretary, we said humbly that We are there. But immediately, TB said, just as we knew he would - No no, Pushpa jiji, you are too senior to take on this young whippersnapper, it would be
insulting to you! So then we quickly said ki haan haan, we may be old, but there ij young Pande blood willing to serve you...'

  'You said that?' I exclaimed, totally appalled. 'Amma, you didn't! That is so feudal! Why do you insist on acting like some kind of loyal knight talking to a king?'

  'Arrey, what foodle foodle?' she said belligerently. 'Seat was slipping out of the familyj hands, we had to do somethingl Then everybody argued for a long time, and finally TB said - People, people, time is running out! We simply have to take a decision on this seat today! I'll be damned if I pick that disgusting Dwivedi fellow, and so I vote we give the ticket to Pande junior. It is a tough seat to win and we have pledged to give thirty per cent of tough seats to the youth. Good luck to her! And that,' she said, not a little bitterly, 'was that.'

  I looked at her, at a loss for words, my brain racing.

  Then I spotted a loophole.

  'But I'm not even registered as a voter from Bittora!' I said triumphantly. 'I've been in Canada all this time. My name's not on the electoral rolls, and it's too late to add it now - so I can't possibly stand! You'll just have to go back and tell TB sorry.'

  But she didn't even blink.

  'Don't be silly, Sarojini,' she said. 'Of course you are registered. We got it done long ago. You think we don't know aawar duty?'

  Oh god, what was this?

  'Amma, I can't take your place,' I said beseechingly. 'Who am I, after all? Nobody!'

  She grunted. 'That ij true enough. And let us tell you, with the pilla in place, winning Bittora ij almost impossible. Tawny Suleiman thinks so too. He came up to us afterwards and thanked us for not letting hij son get the Bittora ticket. He said it waj an impossible seat, that IJP will sweep. He warned us not to expect too much election funds either, because the party won't want to throw good money after a lost cause.'

  'Fuck,' I whispered. 'Amma, this is a total disaster.'

  She squared her shoulders.

  'Oh, no,' she said rallyingly. 'We can still turn it around. Let us make one or two phone calls, we have some friends who will fund us...'

  Her eyes got a dreamily speculative, faraway look, like she was flipping though a virtual filofax of owed favours. Then they zoomed into the neckline of my skimpy velvet choli, which the newly anointed IJP candidate had been unbuttoning passionately not half an hour ago. 'Better get some decent bloujej stitched, Sarojini,' she said. 'Sari hum de denge. Salwar kameez won't do, now that you are the candidate.'

  I swallowed convulsively. This couldn't be happening, I thought numbly, as I flopped back against the cool white upholstery of the old Ambassador.

  'Err... no chance I can duck this thing, is there?' I said hesitantly.

  A small, incoherent, choking sound came from her side of the car.

  'Amma?' I said uncertainly into the near dark.

  She thrust her face into mine, her pointy chin almost hitting me in the eye. 'Of course not' she declared. 'People spend their whole lives waiting for this apportunity! Who do you think you are... some star?'

  'Okay, okay,' I said, trying to swallow the wave of panicky bile that was lurching towards my mouth. 'I'll do it. You'll have to help me a little, though.'

  'Oh, no,' said Amma grimly, tightening the jooda pins in her bun, as we swung into the gates of the Tughlaq Road house and an army of Bittorawallahs rushed up to greet us. 'We will have to help you a lot.'

  ***

  Ballot Boxing

  Part 7 in our continuing series of reports from

  Lok Sabha constituencies across India

  People-Like-Us Bratpack

  Battles it Out in Bittora

  It's a sleepy little town in central Pavit Pradesh. It boasts of an engineering college, a state-of-the-art hospital and a palace converted into a seven-star heritage hotel. There are innumerable beauty parlours and a rather self-important looking, brand new Pizza Hut, but the feel of the town is largely rural, set as it is among large swathes of channe ke khet. And yet, few constituencies in the nation provide such a perfect microcosm of India's political paradoxes as does Bittora, capital of the erstwhile princely state of Bittoragarh and home turf of the redoubtable Pushpa Pande - she of PP for Pushpa Pande, PP for Pavit Pradesh and PP for Pragati Party fame.

  Bittora constituency, comprising the town of Bittora and 600 surrounding villages, spread over 804 densely populated, tough to traverse by road or rail kilometres, is an electoral candidate's nightmare and a psephologist's delight. Kos kos pe paani badle paanch kos pe bani is a truism here. Bittora has a 27 per cent Muslim population, amongst the highest in India. Add to this numerous Dalit and OBC groups, Christian tribals in the Bitwa Reserved Forest, a tiny but extremely vocal and influential Brahmin bloc and a strong environmentalist lobby protesting against the modest dam that is being proposed on the Bitwa river, and the mix can confound the wiliest of veteran campaigners. And now the ancient streets of Bittoragarh are plastered with smiling images of the two youngest candidates in this General Election.

  Sarojini Pande, PP, 25 years old, Electoral Symbol: The Pointing Finger. Post-graduate degree in animation and film graphics from Tuck University, Toronto, schooling from Loreto Girls' Convent, Delhi. A last-minute nominee, pretty little Sarojini Pande is a political novice and seems to have nothing to recommend herself except a warm, wide smile, a scrubbed clean image and the Pande name tag. Her grandparents have always been sympathetic to the plight of the poorer sections in Bittora and the party is obviously hoping that she will provide a healing touch to the section of the electorate which was bitterly upset by Pandit Dinanath Dwivedi's recent insensitive antics during a homestay at a Dalit dwelling in Durguja.

  These, coupled with the now infamous bribe-soliciting 'You did not vote for me for free, why should I do your work for free?' dialogue he was seen to mouth to a TV journalist posing as a Muslim teacher seeking CBSE recognition for an Islamic school during a sting operation a fortnight ago, have sealed Dwivedi's fate with the party Top Brass. To make matters worse, Dwivedi referred to the school as a 'madrasa' and expressed the opinion that 'these people do not require education beyond class five'.

  The footage caused major outrage in Pavit Pradesh. In the words of a prominent Muslim cleric, 'the synthetic green veneer has been ripped from the bosom of pseudo-secularists to expose the throbbing saffron heart beneath.'

  Dwivedi, who was a shoo-in for the PP ticket from Bittora, and had been preparing for the election for almost a year, was shooed out summarily. With no other contender in sight, his ticket was handed over to Pande.

  A visibly jubilant Pushpa Pande is now fielding her granddaughter with great aplomb. The campaign headquarters is likely to be Saket Bhavan, the old family home of Pandit Madan Mohan Pande, famous freedom fighter and Sarojini's grandfather. But young Sarojini Pande's 'healing touch' promises to the poor Muslims of the region may not cut any ice as her main adversary is the scion of the erstwhile royal family of Bittoragarh, Zain Altaf Khan.

  Zain Altaf Khan, Indian Janata Party, 25 years old. Electoral Symbol: Marigold Flower. Engineering degree from MIT, schooling from Winchester School, England. Khan is both handsome and charismatic even though his credentials are mainly that, unlike most young men of his privileged background, he has never run anybody over with a speeding BMW under the influence of alcohol or drugs. His worst crime is probably a series of trophy girlfriends and a passion for rally driving. The ladies of Bittora seem especially vulnerable to his intensity and stormy good looks and view these shortcomings with a tolerant eye. Khan is universally credited with bringing progress and commerce into the area by converting the mouldering Bittora palace into a heritage hotel in partnership with the Taj group, post his father's death a few years ago. Khan's campaign base is to be the Zain Mahal, a luxury suite named after him at the property.

  Unlike most erstwhile royal families from the north, the Altaf Khans are well loved, as one faction chose to stay on in India post Partition and has done a lot - especially in the first thirty years after independenc
e - for the people in the area.

  Khan's appeal to Muslim voters may, however, be diluted by the fact that he is standing on an IJP ticket. This Hindu hardliner party has occasionally followed a strategy of fielding ex-royals, with mixed results. But this is the first time that they have found themselves a Muslim ex-prince - that too from a royal house which is not entirely decrepit. Purged by several chintan baithaks, and with its new secular face on, the party seems proud of its handsome young prot?. But Muslim voters are naturally wary. 'IJP is trying to put a lamb's face on its vulture body,' they said. 'But we are not so easily convinced. Hum sochenge, we will not be so quick to decide where to cast our vote.'

  But Khan seems sanguine. 'Everybody knows the old IJP is dead,' he stresses. 'This is a new party, one which has emerged after intense introspection and soul-searching. The ideals of secular janta stalwarts of the seventies are very close to its heart. Minorities and backwards will be well-represented here. IJP aims to give the voters a genuine option to the hypocritical, populist, overfed leadership of the Pragati.'

  Meanwhile, there's also a little band of spoilers out to queer the pitch. Forty-year-old college professor Vir Singh, a popular if controversial local figure, has secured the KDS ticket and could end up splitting the high-caste Brahmin vote three-ways.

  Another last minute candidate could well be the disgraced Pandit Dwivedi himself, who, having been denied the Pragati ticket, is rumoured to be standing as an independent, simply to block Pushpa Pande and her granddaughter.

  But Khan minor is clearly in the lead, with Pande junior hot at his heels.

  It's a battle of foreign-returned local brats who are both probably much more at home in the air-conditioned environs of big cities than in the dusty hearths of Pavit Pradesh. But they are even now travelling down to Bittora to file their nomination papers. And they seem to be in earnest.

  So is this the new, post-26/11 India? Genuinely concerned, young, educated people-like-us, coming to a head at the hustings? Or is it just a sordid continuation of dynastic politics? Whatever else it may be, it is certainly a piquant situation when a Brahmin girl from the Pragati fights a Muslim ex-royal from the IJP.