A party booth in Ernakulam where Congress, CPM and BJP share one roof, one history

Amid an intense campaign and a high-voltage contest, a small party booth in Ernakulam set an example for parent factions on the polling day.

Across the Mathur bridge in Thripunithura sat one booth that housed three parties and their representatives. Set up in front of Maya Printers, Congress, BJP and CPM workers have been sharing this booth at the same spot for over 30 years.

“Elections will come today and disappear tomorrow; our friendship doesn’t change”, said a Congress worker from this unlikely unit. Beside him, a BJP and a CPM worker nod in agreement. “We still need to see each other after the polls, right?," they ask together.

In a heated political climate where party workers tear down posters of rivals, these representatives proudly declare that their booth has witnessed no conflicts in its history of being a shared space.
“We can all preach our politics, but it should not lead to tussles and quarrels”, one of them said.

Laughing, they recall how their CPM neighbour painted on a UDF-booked wall–a cardinal sin in ground-level campaigning. But in Mathur, a phone call request was enough for the CPM to readily return the space which was quickly adorned with the Congress symbol.

Just yesterday, BJP workers struggled to find a booth and had resigned to camping out in the open, under the sun. But their friends in the CPM and Congress stepped in. At 11 in the night, they moved things around to make space for their BJP counterparts.

While this small corner rightfully represents unity in diversity, their reason for transcending differences is simple–they are all neighbours from the same locality whose sense of community comes before their individual politics.

As older party workers from this group reminisced about their shared history, a young adolescent proudly stood beside them with his hands crossed–a sure sign that the future of this corner in Mathur will continue without conflict.