A prediction for the Indian election results

By the time you read this, the results of the Indian elections would at best be a few hours away. Who will win? Will Modi be home easily or will he need allies? Will the results show a Modi wave or will the wave prove to have been a bubble? All the pundits and punters, astrologers calling themselves psephologists and entertainers calling themselves TV journalists have made their predictions and guesstimates. So here's my prediction: I don't know.

It's so hard for people to say they don't know. Everyone is expected to know the future beforehand. If you travel in a train everybody knows everything about the train: its stops, technology, arrival time. If you ask people in Delhi for directions, they will never say they don't know. They will think a little, as though summoning the answer from the GPS devices installed in their subconscious and then tell you to go straight. Another few metres later ask another person and s/he will also ask you to go straight. You will soon realise that you are going around in circles. “Bhaiyya yeh C-35 Defence Colony kaha padega?” “Aagaey”. After going around in circles for days, you will learn that anyone who pauses to think for even a second, actually doesn't know the way. Why, then, is he misleading you? He's misleading you because it would be too embarrassing to admit he doesn't know. It would be like admitting he's not a man. By asking him for directions you have challenged his very being, his manhood, his humanity even.

When you have mastered the art of telling the fake direction givers from the real one, you have become a Dilliwala. You have owned the city.

Has Narendra Modi been given the right directions? Has he been going around in circles or has he been taking us around in circles? Did the Modi ‘wave’ really turn into a ‘tsunami’ or did it fizzle away like the fizz in my Coca Cola?

Perhaps, he doesn't himself know, even though his party and the media are taking seriously the obscenely good ‘exit poll’ results. These are just some of the things I don't understand about the human condition. Why do we need ‘exit polls’ when the real results are just four days away? How do ‘exit polls’ results help democracy or journalism? The exit polls were wrong in 2004 and 2009 too. Why, then, do they still do exit polls? To give the stock markets a false high? As Shobhaa De once said, the Bombay Sensex has neither sense nor sex. It's true of TV news too.

The multi-cornered contest in most of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Seemandhra and Telangana has been so close that the difference of every one per cent vote share can make a large difference in the number of seats. The result could be anything. Narendra Modi could be prime minister on Monday or he may take three weeks to gather the numbers, or a completely unexpected name we don't yet know the spelling of could become a ‘Third Front’ prime minister by mid-June. At any rate, Delhi's who's who will have to postpone their annual month-long holiday to London from the usual June to July. Rahul Gandhi has already made a short trip, missing Dr Manmohan Singh's farewell dinner. Why should a feudal lord care about his servant's retirement?

I have no guesstimates or predictions. But amongst other strange thing about the human condition are dreams. My dreams never come true. It is said that a dream you see in the morning always comes true. However, I'm such an insomniac that my mornings are sometimes my nights. So, this may mean nothing. But given that reality is full of nonsense, I'm sure you want to know my dream. I dreamt three weeks ago that the Bhartiya Janata Party won only 160-something seats, as opposed to the 200 they need to win to start making an alliance, leave alone the 272 that some exit polls think they will win on their own along with the pre-poll alliance partners.

No matter what the result, we'll heave a sigh of relief that this endless election is over. We've been waiting for this day for at least two years. Dr Singh's government went into a limbo. Nobody asked him to resign and he asked himself, sannu ki? Servants serve until the masters please. National interest is interesting only if it's in your interest.

The joke is that Narendra Modi has already been India's prime minister for a year and now he's facing anti-incumbency. If he wins, I will play Iqbal Bano's Hum Dekhenge and if he loses I will recount the story that led Nizamuddin Auliya to say “Hunooz, Dilli dur ast”.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2014.

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