And..I became an Aam Aadmi..

People in the bus kept giving me weird glances. I ignored. The glances grew weirder with each stop. I looked into the driver’s mirror. My brother would call it “the smuggest look I’d ever managed”, I thought. I sniggered.

Like Churchill said, “No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the little (wo)man, walking into the little booth with a little pencil making a little cross on a little bit of paper,” after all.

The bus stopped in a jam. I looked out of the window, saw the Chief Minister in the Salaam-Alaikum hoarding, Eww! I huffed. The Congress party banner brought to the mind, Italy’s Durga Mata and her “skin show.” And ‘naturally’ followed the Rajnath’s 13, this being the only coherent thing they ever say! The left and Yechury’s “netizens don’t represent citizens” quip wrinkled my forehead to bring forth an ugly scowl on the face. Suddenly; all the ‘newspaper editorials-weekly magazines-articles’ readings seemed to make sense. I looked back at the hoarding with a wry ‘I’m-going-to-decide-your-destiny’ smile as the bus honked, screeched and accelerated. It felt nice. Very nice.

I got my Voter ID today. I feel like an ‘Indian Citizen’ now. When I got my passport, it felt more like ‘I’m only second to Whiter people!’ [Whiter? Oh well, my watchman’s daughter said to me yesterday, “You are so white!”] It was more ‘guilt’ than ‘pride’. I went to get the signatures of our neighbours on those papers and they asked me, “So, Foreign aa?” And evidently embarrassed I retorted, “No, just like that!”

The old auto-wallah on whose sawaari I came back home was not very excited at the prospect of my becoming a voter though. He managed to finally ask me why I was feeling so overwhelmingly ‘self important’.

I told him, “Ab desh ke netaaon ka bhaagy mere haath mein hai” pointing to him my nail that’d soon be inked!

“Beti yeh aapki galat faimi hai!” he said poignantly and turned away to drive.

I indulgently inquired, “Aap aisa kyun sochthe hain?”

He spat his pan and smiled saying, “Aap tho padi likhin hain, aap un sab baaton se anjaan thodi na hain!”

In a flash it brought to my mind the deformities, grave flaws and egregious deviances in the executive, legislative and judicial instrumentalities that Krishna Iyer had talked about in his recent editorial. Disturbed; I looked towards the road, nudging myself to change moods, saw another TDP leader’s banner and went back to feeling self-important again.
The auto-wallah who caught my eye through the rear view mirror, spat his pan again and smiled broadly.