One morning I saw a policeman writing a slogan on the wall outside the temple with a red paintbrush:
DO YOU WANT GOOD ROADS, CLEAN WATER, GOOD
HOSPITALS? THEN VOTE OUT THE GREAT SOCIALIST!
For years there was a deal between the landlords and the Great Socialist-everyone in the village knew about this-but this year something had gone wrong with the deal, so the four Animals had joined together and started a party of their own.
And below the slogan the policeman wrote:
ALL INDIA SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE FRONT
(LENINIST FACTION)
Which was the name of the landlords' party.
In the weeks before the elections, trucks bumped up and down the dirty street of Laxmangarh, full of young men holding microphones: 'Stand up to the rich!'
Vijay, the bus conductor, was always on one of these trucks. He had quit his old job and joined politics now. That was the thing about Vijay; each time you saw him he had done better for himself. He was a born politician. He wore a red headband to show that he was one of the Great Socialist's supporters, and made speeches every morning in front of the tea shop. The landlords brought in trucks full of their own supporters in retaliation. And from these trucks men shouted out, 'Roads! Water! Hospitals! Vote out the Great Socialist!'
A week before the elections, both sides stopped sending out their trucks. I heard what had happened while cleaning up a table.
The Animals' bluff had worked. The Great Socialist had agreed to cut a deal with them.
Vijay bowed down and touched the feet of the Stork at a big rally in front of the tea shop. It seemed that all differences had been patched, and the Stork had been named the president of the Laxmangarh branch of the Great Socialist's party. Vijay was to be his deputy.
Now the rallies were done. The priest celebrated a special
Lots of dust and policemen came into the village next morning. One officer read out voting instructions in the marketplace.
Whatever was being done, was being done for our own good. The Great Socialist's enemies would try and steal the election from us, the poor, and take the power away from us, the poor, and put those shackles back on our hands that he, the Great Socialist, had so lovingly taken off our hands. Did we understand? And then, in a cloud of dust, the police drove off.
'It's the way it always is,' my father told me that night. 'I've seen twelve elections-five general, five state, two local-and someone else has voted for me twelve times. I've heard that people in the other India get to vote for themselves-isn't that something?'
On the day of the election, one man went mad.
This happens every time, at every election in the Darkness.
One of my father's colleagues, a small dark-skinned man whom no one had taken any notice of until now, was surrounded by a mob of rickshaw-pullers, including my father. They were trying to dissuade him, but only halfheartedly.
They had seen this thing happening before. They wouldn't be able to stop this man now.
Every now and then, even in a place like Laxmangarh, a ray of sunlight will break through. All these posters and speeches and slogans on the wall, maybe they get into a man's head. He declares himself a citizen of the democracy of India and he wants to cast his vote. That was where this rickshaw-puller had got to. He declared himself free of the Darkness: he had made his Benaras that day.
He began walking straight to the voting booth at the school. 'I'm supposed to stand up to the rich, aren't I?' he shouted. 'Isn't that what they keep telling us?'
When he got there, the Great Socialist's supporters had already put up the tally of votes outside on a blackboard: they had counted 2,341 votes in that booth. Everyone had voted for the Great Socialist. Vijay the bus conductor was up on a ladder, hammering into the wall a banner with the Great Socialist's symbol (the hands breaking their shackles). The slogan on the banner said:
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GREAT SOCIALIST ON HIS
UNANIMOUS VICTORY FROM LAXMANGARH!
Vijay dropped the hammer, the nails, and the banner when he saw the rickshaw-puller.
'What are you doing here?'
'Voting,' he shouted back. 'Isn't it the election today?'
I cannot confirm what happened next, even though I was only a few feet behind him. A big crowd had gathered to watch him from a distance, but when the policeman charged at us, we turned and ran in a stampede. So I never saw what they did to that brave, mad man.
I heard about it the next day, while pretending to scratch a dirty spot out of a tabletop. Vijay and a policeman had knocked the rickshaw-puller down, and they had begun beating him; they hit him with their sticks, and when he thrashed at them they kicked him. They took turns. Vijay hit him and the policeman stamped on his face and then Vijay did it again. And after a while the body of the rickshaw-puller stopped wriggling and fighting back, but they kept stamping on him, until he had been stamped back into the earth.
If I may go back for a moment to that WANTED poster, Your Excellency. Being called a murderer: fine, I have no objection to that. It's a fact: I am a sinner, a fallen human. But to be called a murderer by the police!
Here's a little souvenir of your Indian visit to keep with you. Balram Halwai is a vanished man, a fugitive, someone whose whereabouts are unknown to the police, right?
Ha!
The police know exactly where to find me. They will find me dutifully voting on election day at the voting booth in the school compound in Laxmangarh in Gaya District, as I have done in every general, state, and local election since I turned eighteen.
I am India 's most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth.
Now, though the elections were due soon in Dhanbad, life went on as ever within the high walls of the Stork's house. He sighed as his legs were pressed in warm water; games of cricket and badminton went on around him; and I washed and cleaned the two Pomeranian dogs faithfully.
Then one day a familiar face turned up at the gate. Vijay, the bus conductor from Laxmangarh. My childhood hero had a new uniform this time. He was dressed all in white, and wore a white Nehru cap on his head, and had rings of solid gold on eight of his fingers!
Public service had been good to him.
I waited by the gate and watched. The Stork himself came out to see Vijay, and bowed down before him, a landlord bowing before a pigherd's son! The marvels of democracy!
Two days later, the Great Socialist came to the house.
The entire household was abuzz because of the visit. Mr. Ashok stood at the gate, waiting with a garland of jasmine flowers. His brother and his father were by his side.
A car came to the gate, its door opened, and then the face I had seen on a million election posters since I was a boy emerged-I saw the puffy cheeks, the spiky white hair, the thick gold earrings.
Vijay was wearing his red headband today, and holding up the flag with the breaking-shackles symbol. He shouted, 'Long live the Great Socialist!'
The great man folded his palms and bowed all around him. He had one of those either/or faces that all great Indian politicians have. This face says that it is now at peace-and you can be at peace too if you follow the owner of that face. But the same face can also say, with a little twitch of its features, that it has known the opposite of peace: and it can make this other fate yours too, if it so wishes.
