16 April 2014, 10:06 PM IST
Thoughts on this season's coolest thing to wear
Voting has become a fashion statement, and the must-have for every hip person is the new LBD, the Little Black Dot. Last week`s STOI ramped up its street cred twice over: anointing it the 'coolest tattoo to sport' and crowning it the unchallenged 'selfie op'. So who would dare ignore the directions of the SPS, the Style Positioning System, and wander off to the beach on polling day instead of making a beeline for the designated booth as if it were a Summer Sale at the mall? As all those bright and excited faces show, Gen Y is no longer drawling its usual indifferent 'Why?', and is all charged up to 'be the change it wants to see'. What a difference from the bad old days when we had no social media to prod us into the social, and every other responsibility, that the casting of a vote implies.
The same STOI piece by the trendspotting Joeanna Rebello Fernandes may have also warned that the Facebookies are flocking to the booth for bragging rights rather than out of democratic duty, and that this could well be our first peer-pressure election. But it's there for all to see that this season's the obligatory object of attire and desire is the new LBD.
Strangely, i had found a counterpoint to this not in a Commissar of the Maoist brigades, but in a Yogi. The previous Thursday, my yoga teacher used an electoral analogy to tell us not to get obsessed by separate body parts or even individual asanas, but to aim for the oneness of body, mind and breath. Zubin Sir is an eclectic guy, and subpoenas all manner of disciplines to draw his parallels.
This time he referred to the campaign material now regularly shoved under our doors which addressed us as 'Dear Voter'. He scoffed, "These self-serving politicians reduce us to a mono identity, when in fact the human being — and an evolved yoga practitioner — is an integrated whole of many aspects."
But, Zubin Sir, i must deferentially differ. At electime, like a defiant John F Kennedy at the Berlin Wall in 1963, we must declare, 'Ich bin ein Voter.' Not only is everyone a voter on polling day, all our different identities merge into our singular voter ID. (In much the same way that the IDs of not only all BJP candidates but even those of its allied parties have been subsumed into the ID of one Omnipotent Being.)
Let me explain. By lining up in the summer sun, voters propitiate the various aspects of their life. They fondly hope that the party/person they vote for will benefit them as a user of roads, consumer of carbs and cars, householder, carer of children and elderly, tax-payer, entrepreneur, worker, farmer, investor, sky-diver, gym-goer, pub-crawler, eco-warrior... Since manifestoes have been obliged to state their stand on Sec 377, our electime ID draws even our sexual orientation into its octopus embrace.
If the apparent is in fact the real, then we must believe that the man who will pander to all our multiple IDs is a certain Mr M, who also appears to be the certain Mr PM. With nothing accidental about him.
The record-socking numbers lining up to acquire the new LBD suggest that the electorate across the vast Indian swathe wants a total makeover. Since 'Only NaMo' has positioned himself as the sole-selling agent of change, we must also believe that those enthusiastic queues are showing the finger to the 'hand', and pointing to Supermodi as the single-window clearance of all the hopes of their many IDs.
But here's the nagging fear that we simply can't wish or push away: our Id could become totally subservient to his Ego.
***
Alec Smart said: "The wife has emerged out of the closet. No chance of the Snoopee following suit."
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