Marked people
I just returned as a marked man. Having been marked by the mark of democracy – ink poured over left index finger. I was one of a few hundred lining up for hour and half or more from 7.00 AM in the morning at a polling booth of about 5 dingy dark rooms and a courtyard of about 400 sq ft. There was these few 100s in 6 – 8 serpiginous queues, waiting in the summer heat, patiently to get themselves marked. But this is where democracy lives. Not in corridors of power of Delhi or state capitals. In the small villages, slums and residential colonies of our nation! Having the privilege of having a say in how I feel the country should be governed. As I waited in the queue at the polling station - there was that feeling of being part of a vibrant grass root democracy – where in the midst of a very caste conscious and divided society, the well off and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the upper caste and the lower castes, the majority community and the minority communities...