Who'd have thought? Elections bring out the sap in me.
Melissa A. Bell -
Sunday, May 17, 2009 5:41 PM
November 4, 2008, I had just flown back to Delhi from New York and came straight to my office. With five editors, I watched Barack Obama accept the US nomination for presidency.
Wow. Even typing that I get tears in my eyes. You should have seen me that morning. As one editor put it, “Melissa could solve the water crisis.” Another said that our budget for the amount of Kleenex I used was going to put us in the poorhouse.
Yes, I’m a sap, but crying over an election? It just didn’t feel right. I’m a diehard, long-term cynic. I exploited my secure, happy childhood, my country of opportunity, my life of relative ease, and I became a grandiose peanut gallery sneer-er.
Actually believe in change? Actually be inspired by politics? Not in my lifetime.
But the Obama aura sparkled and crackled and excited people across the world. It was easy to chalk my crying up to a once-in-a-lifetime moment, made more palatable by the fact that it was also a huge backlash of relief.
So I quickly settled back into my cozy cynic’s chair. When the elections started here, I hunkered down and smugly sat back: They’re so boring! I whined. Where’s the excitement? The story!
This time it was an even easier seat to take. Sure, I have preferences about who should be running the Indian government: I base it solely on how cute a candidate looks in a pink turban (I’ll give you a hint: my vote this year would have gone to the dimpled darling. What? He wears a good pink turban.). But I don’t have a vote. And there’s just so much I don’t know about this country, still. How can I say who should lead Kerala? Karnataka? South Mumbai? (I never saw those candidates in pink turbans.).
Fast forward to May 16, 2009. I found myself in the same position I had been in six months before: in a gang of reporters watching around the exact same televisions as another country’s leader accepted victory.
This time the faces were not new, young faces of change. It was rather the opposite: embracing the status quo. But still a charge filled the room—a hope, a possibility.
I left the office and the streets rang with shouts and songs. Five trucks drove by me, a voice boomed from a loudspeaker, “Thank you, people of Delhi! Thank you for your vote.” Men and women in the backs of the trucks danced and waved and shouted “Jai Ho!”
I came home to fireworks and people shaking hands in the market. My serious, subdued friend called from Kolkata, “We have broken free of 32 years of oppression!” He sounded like a child, excited, laughing. I almost didn’t recognize him. On Facebook, my friends lamented and crowed.
It was a good day.
I don’t know if democracy is or isn’t our best option. I do know it’s not easily forced on anyone. And I do know corruption and apathy can be its bedfellows.
But, man, on Election Day, for that moment I realized how foolish is my cynicism. It’s not just some sparkly politician that excites me. It’s not even about the politicians. It’s about the voters. The possibility that we are in control of our own destiny, that we have a choice and a power. The fact that we all can participate in the election unifies us as countrymen, whichever country it is, even though it may divide us temporarily onto sides. Oh man, I feel so corny. But, hot damn. It feels good.
I am proud of India, of democracy, of all these corny things I never like to admit to. And here I go again: tearing up like a baby. Maybe I’ll have to start getting used to this.