Inked!

It felt quite exciting to walk into the polling booth this morning. Being Malleswaram West constituency, it's among the most upper middle class neighbourhoods inBangalore. There were no sycophants hanging around, no hangers on, no sign even that an election was on! I just strolled to the polling booth, walked in to find no one there but the election officials, displayed my card. They found my name in under 10 seconds on the list, handed me 2 slips of paper, I first had to sign against a register, hand over the slips of paper to another desk in the room, get my left index finger inked and then proceed to another desk covered with make shift cardboard where there were 2 electronic voting machines clearly displaying the names and party symbols of candidates. One simple press of the button next to the "hand" symbol, the machine chirped in acknowledgement and that was it. No lines, no waiting, no nothing. After that the feeling of freedom and some sort of empowerment came rushing back: yes my candidate may not win nor may my party of choice but at least my opinion will be counted. Jai Hind!