Elections remind me of my college days and my first contest as a candidate.
I was a student of BSc during the fag end of the 1960s, and I was made to contest as class representative in an SF ticket. My friend, an SF activist, who filed nomination as an independent, was my opponent.
My candidature posed a challenge. My mind was full of thoughts about cinematography and drawing. I am not the one who would talk much. I hardly knew to win over voters, and I felt embarrassed to request votes. On the other hand, my opponent had the gift of the gab, and his campaign zoomed ahead in top gear.
With no alternatives in sight, I decided to roll out the campaign in my style. I drew posters in different styles, and put them up in and around the Chemistry department. Once the posters appeared, the election scene got all charged up in my favour.
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Teachers and students who saw the posters showered praised on me. None of them doubted my impending victory. Additionally, I am the official SF candidate.
When the votes were counted, I realized a big truth. Those who had praised me did not vote in my favour. I was routed.
Though my posters did not help me, campaign materials I had designed for a civic body poll candidate helped her win. The candidate was none other than my mother-in-law, Devaki Warrier, who successfully contested as a Left independent to the city corporation council from Medical College ward.
The banners I designed, besides requesting votes, also carried a thought-provoking sentence.
The posters I see now make me curious. The candidates in posters are seen grinning ear to ear. Attractive smiling is a human quality (I am not forgetting that some animals too smile). Photoshopping helps in making candidates look fairer and more handsome.
But there were a time when leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Kamaraj, Rajendra Prasad, S. Radhakrishnan et al, posed seriously in posters. I feel, perhaps, they were so concerned about the nation’s future that they could not flash a smile.
Even today, I doubt how many of those who honestly contemplate of the situation in the country could smile.
Elections have now become celebrations. And hence it is the candidates’ responsibility to smile and be happy and hug each other and the voters. It is anybody’s guess how honest are these hugs and smiles.
In Thiruvananthapuram, I initially stayed at Shanti Nagar, before shifting to Vellayambalam. My name was then included in the voters’ lift of both the places. But I opted to cast my vote at the nearby Cotton Hill in the first election after I had shifted residence. Since it is illegal to cast votes at two places in the same poll, it is natural that I didn’t go to Shanti Nagar.
I am a Left sympathizer. A few party workers, after learning that I had not cast my vote at Shanti Nagar, spread a rumour that I had kept away from the polling booth.
I came to know of the rumour when a few people rang me up in the evening. Those party men even contacted journalists, saying that Shaji had taken a retrograde stand by not casting his vote. A few newspapers published their version the next morning without cross-checking with me.
Election time also reminds me of such shrewd affectations.
