Is it just me, or has this election been on forever?
Why won’t this election end? I’m at that point where I have to stare into space slack-jawed just to remember when it started (and don’t lie, you just did it too.)
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I fondly remember my grandmother telling me stories about the second phase to put me to bed as a child. And a team of archeologists just unearthed evidence of the first phase under a parking lot in Kohima.
Nostradamus foretold that the eighth and ninth phase will occur roughly a billion years from now, unless the sun goes supernova before that, in which case re-polling will have to be carried out in Guntur and Hingoli constituencies as supernovas are against election code of conduct.
The election has finally boiled down to a family drama. Words like ‘wife’, ‘girlfriend’, ‘daughter’, ‘son’, ‘mother’, and ‘that odd Vadra fellow in his pink pants’ dominate the discourse, when facts should. Pic/EPA
Scientists have also estimated that if this election goes on any longer, it will officially take the record for the longest running event in history, toppling previous record-holder ‘Senthil weds Priya”. In fact some astrophysicists suggest that if we can find out when this election began, we may finally have the answer to the question of the true age of the universe.
Regretfully they say we will never be able to find out the true age of LK Advani, because he insists that before the Big Bang occurred, there used to be a Ram Mandir in its place. I would apologize for that last joke, but it isn’t my fault. Fatigue will do that to a man. After weeks and weeks, how many jokes can one make about the same fourteen people at the centre of this never-ending democratic drama?
Another Modi/riot joke? No. A fresh batch of “Congress is so corrupt” jibes? Boring. Some more “Rahul Gandhi is so stupid that… ” perhaps? Never. How about round 4849 of “Kejriwal’s a quitter”? I’d rather sit on a dharna. If this slog were any more tedious it’d be a Sri Lankan Test innings.
There’s just too much pressure. It’s not like we got started on the first day of polling. No, before that we had weeks, nay, months of campaign speeches in which everyone rushed to put their feet in their mouth. And even at the end of the election, we have to brace ourselves for weeks of “horse-trading” as parties struggle to make the numbers. I’ve never understood why our MPs are compared to horses, it all seems quite insulting. For one, horses are beautiful and do a lot of work.
There are no more jokes left to make, but there’s always a little more election left. The situation has been made worse by the fact that now the American media has parodied us, with John Oliver’s stellar 10-minute explainer of our elections that name-checks Rahul, Modi and even the Human Megaphone that is Arnab Goswami. And now that white people have done it, our domestic output is doomed to insecurity, envy and uniquely Indian sense of “Why can’t we do this?”
The bar has also been raised by politicians themselves, who rush to outdo each other in comedic masterpieces. Like all Indian things, the election too has finally boiled down to a family drama. Words like ‘wife’, ‘girlfriend’, ‘daughter’, ‘son’, ‘mother’, and ‘that odd Vadra fellow in his pink pants’ dominate the discourse, when facts should.
Me? I’m pooped. Not a joke left in this head, as the last 500 words show. And so I am laying down my pen, mostly because it’s difficult to type with one in your hand. No more election jokes from me, from now until the end of time (aka eighth phase of polling).
Except on counting day of course, where I will tweet my butt off, because that way I’ll have a story to tell my grandson when I put him to bed on swearing-in day, decades from now.
Rohan Joshi is a writer and stand-up comedian who likes reading, films and people who do not use the SMS lingo. You can also contact him on www.facebook.com/therohanjoshi
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