My very first Vote

Today is a historical day for your humble narrator here.

Today, the day of the first session of polling for the Panchayath elections was the very first day in my life, wherein I used my sovereign rights of voting.

Am I thrilled?

Oh yes, I’m thrilled like nothing else. It was one hell of an experience.

I mean, it genuinely had no element of fiction or fantasy and was rock bottom reality and wasn’t less than anything ordinary. And all these experiences are brought to you by your faithful narrator with an extra smudge of excitement.

(The following is fully based on real events.)

These days when I run out of ideas about spending the whole day, I find a more energy efficient way to burn daytime. I sleep like a bear.

And today was not less than any other day with me waking up nearly on the 11^th hour…

I mean the sun was at its peak and still it found hard to penetrate under my bed sheet.

And finally I woke up, I found myself staring at that fat familiar and smelly form of mine in the mirror, which was in turn staring at me.

I crept in and out of my bathroom; I crept in and out of kitchen and finally settled on the couch with some snacks and the television remote.

The clock struck twelve and every grown up in the house was screaming at me.

Apparently, there shouting had a valid reason. I was included in the voter’s list for this year’s election. Although I appear much younger than I ought to be(thanks to the good looks), I had evolved into a serious sovereign adult. This very fact was immediately followed by the acquisition of a voter slip from the political parties concerned. At first it took a two step process to confirm my name in the list. All that process was drab. Yet it was exciting.

And so I was ready to cast my first vote. The three slips were provided to us as stapled together. I separated my slip from the lot. This act when viewed from third person, seemed like I was handling al the slips, by myself. At least that was my mother thought.

I happily exited the house along with my mum and dad and the 3 of us started towards the polling station. I was nearly invisible en route. I mean my mum and dad had other important things to discuss.

As we approached the polling booth, which turned out to be the Block office, all I could see for half a mile distance were banners and posters of different parties. And strangely every candidate regardless the party, were smiling prosperously at me. I felt as if my vote was going to determine their destiny (A funny thought at that moment, I guess).

Now that we were almost there, Dad made some statement about voter’s slips. He asked my mother whether she had them with her.

And she was pointing her index finger at me. I guess that drew the first blood. I said I had my slip only.

The word 'Pandemonium' refers to a sudden chaos, when things starts messing up real fast. I think, at that moment it was the right word to define my state.

I was torn between the essential duty of a son and the practical application of commonsense. The question of the hour was “If you took your slip out of the bundle, why the hell did you take the other slips?”(Actually the exact wordings were a bit more out of the dictionary and your narrator here is too ashamed to use them...)

“Oh god, what the hell was I thinking?” I asked myself. Mum was an expert in accusing people and dad was the master of accidental advising. And for a minute I was drowning in blames and scolding. In a way I was responsible for this crisis. As we were some 3 miles far from home and my mum was in a hurry to go to her duty after the voting, the question of going back o the house and fetching the rest of the slips was disposed.

But the party posts all along the way to the polling booth provided a copy of the slips to those who failed to bring them. So my head was temporarily saved from the guillotine. But immediately I was assigned the duty to get slips from these party posts for mum and dad.

As I was walking towards one of the party post, the little man inside me was showing me a bird. I got to one post and got two slips done in mum’s and dad’s name.

I rushed to the polling booth, in front of which my Padre and Madre were waiting furiously.

I handed over the slips to mum with sheer confidence. We all made up to the queue. Males and females had different queues. And the Adam’s ribs were dominating the place. I stood behind the meager masculine queue as the humungous feminine procession made it slowly into the voting station.

Every now and then I encountered a familiar face walking out of the voting station. I bothered to put up a smile at each of them.

And after another 15 minutes I found myself in front of the polling officers. There were 3 polling officers in front of me and one near the voting machine.

Also there were a row of volunteers scrutinizing the voter’s list as the names of the voters were being called out. I displayed my slip to the first officer, who called my name loud as the volunteers probed through the list and gave a permissive nod. I signed across my register number and got a small token from the second officer. As I reached the third officer, my excitement was at its peak. He dipped a small stick into the polling ink and smeared a drop over my left index fingernail. All these events were happening in a dramatic slow motion even Amal Neerad could only dream of. (You can go beyond any possible budget to dream, right...)

And here I was before the chief polling officer near the voting machine. He took the token from me and confirmed my voting right. He pressed a key in that machine which somehow reminded me of a big calculator.

I made my way into the voting cabinet which was fortified by a small cardboard partition from the rest of the world. I picked my candidate and pressed the button corresponding to his symbol.

A long shriek of electrical beep came registering my vote.

And that was it. I felt happy. I felt relieved. Mum and dad had left already, registering their votes. And as I exited the polling booth I had this odd sense of accomplishment.

I wanted to show that mark of ink to everyone coming to the booth as an insignia of my accomplishment. Maybe I’m just out of my mind. Maybe it is not a big thing to cast your vote especially when one vote usually never causes big turmoil. So somehow I refrained myself from doing so, considering my surroundings and the rarest probability of disposing me as a nutcase (Though some people know the truth, it’s not fair to advertise it in large scale, right?)

And I descended from the peak of joy and made my way back to home. The scorching heat was not a problem. The thundering noises of announcements were not a problem. All that mattered was this odd sense of being a voter. I reached the town junction and entered a barber shop asking……………………

(Well you all know the rest of the story, right?

Oh god, not that ending. I went for a haircut damn it….)