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Kamala Das

Elections in India are rigged, anyway!

If you have written a few books, you cannot escape from the clutches of persons looking around for speech-makers. Every day, there are meetings and seminars which require well-known people to inaugurate or preside over them.

It is useless protesting, or proclaiming that you are ignorant of the main theme. In Cochin, the ignorant ones are more in demand because they keep off the topic and indulge in the light banter that appeals to the womenfolk in the auditorium.

For the inauguration, everybody prefers either the governor -- for he will bring his glittering security guards -- or a minister, in which case the newspapers will cover the speeches.

But, when the VIPs cancel at the last minute, the organisers turn to writers or doddering freedom fighters. The writers might bitch about others in their profession and the freedom fighters might, quite understandingly, talk passionately of Mahatma Gandhi. The bitching is preferable to the outpourings of Gandhians.

Balachandran Chullikad is a poet most in demand. He barks at the senior writers, most probably to amuse the audience or to create a controversy. The Sunday supplements of newspapers subsist on controversies. When one of the victims of Balachandran's vitriolic attacks strikes back, he narrates of his recent trip to Stockholm. The big names of the Nobel Committee are strewn haphazardly in his speeches and writings. This makes his opponents sink into silence.

Some days ago, the World Malayali Council asked me to climb a stage. About an hour after the stipulated time for its inauguration, we -- the speakers -- were seated on the stage whispering among ourselves. When the speeches began, we dozed off in full view of the audience. Babu Paul, the additional chief secretary and long time secretary of culture asked me, "Did you hear me snore?"

I recommend reclining chairs on the stage during such seminars where speakers abound. The participants can be woken up gently when their turn arrives.

Kerala will not allow ministers to do their job. On the highways, you come across the speeding state-cars of ministers all prepared to light a lamp at an inauguration and speak a few words. The few words will take an hour or two. The ministers speak monotonously of inane things till the not-so-healthy ones in the audience fall off their seats in exhaustion.

Ministers should be allowed to govern. Writers should be allowed to write. Social workers should be allowed to do social work. Nubile girls from the neighbourhood should be summoned for purposes of lighting lamps. Call retired teachers, who have time on their hands, for making speeches. Or menopausal housewives who need to let off steam to prevent hysteria from developing.

Spinsters can talk of the exploitation of women by the media, etc. Freedom fighters can be summoned to speak on India's ancient culture and Mahatma Gandhi. Organisers of public meetings should be asked to spare those who are busy. Our chief minister, Narayanan, is old and diabetic. He controls his blood sugar level by eating fenugreek soaked overnight in water. Why be cruel enough to drag him here and there?

Now that another election is in the offing, all of Kerala's auditoriums and halls will reverberate with speeches. Some independents, who cannot afford to have a hall, will stand at street corners and bellow out their manifestos.

This time, very few of the grown-ups will vote. They are fed up with the undemocratic goings-on in the Parliament. This time only the new voters, the 18-year-olds, will go for the polls. It will not make a difference. Elections in India are rigged affairs anyway!

Illustration: Dominic Xavier