Poll ka Dot.

It was 6:45 A.M and I was up and ready to go and exercise my franchise to choose who my representative in the State Legislature will be. Voting was officially supposed to begin at 7:00 A.M and I was there at 7:05, so all those who shake your heads in dismay and go Tch, tch, this younger generation, no reponsibility, try saying that now! (Ok, that said, I must admit I was the only one in the age group of 18-25 over there... there was a girl in an Orange Tee and Three-fourths and all, but you know how it is with girls, you can never tell their age!)

All you kids who haven't voted because of age reasons or out of sheer apathy personifying the sterotyped "younger generation", this is how the process will be...

You have a number on your voter-slip, a nice three-digit one which gives which division you are in. There will be 4-5 divisions in one polling booth and you stand in the queue which is for your division. Once there, you will hear raised voices coming from inside the room for the adjacent division. If you're inquisitive or attentive enough, news will eventually filter throught that an indignant citizen has take exception to the fact that the booth opened only at 7:15 when it has been said all over the papers that it's at 7 o'clock, don't you people read the papers??? At this point, you're thinking Uncle, if he stopped and read the papers, he will have got here even later, you would rather have that? But prudence, and the fact that you're approximatley half as old as the next youngest person in that given radius of 100 meters, stops you from making such scandalous statements.

In your queue, you just mentally verify that you're standing in the correct division and inardvertently let the 182 (the divsion no.) slip out of your mouth. The omni-present ever-helpful Mami in front immediately whirls around and launches into a detailed explanation of matching the no. on your slip to the no. on the board in front of the polling booth. She confirms that you have indeed selected the right queue, God bless you. Mercifully Pink Floyd's High Hopes is running through your head and it blanks out all such external noise. Seeing that you're being very uncivil, your Mom will step in to handle the situation and enquires politely as to whether her children could not make it to vote.
"They're over there", the Mami says with a you-know-the-place wink.
"Oh, in The States, is it?", Civil behaviour being maintained by Mom.
"Yes, imagine how many people will be like that. That's a lot of votes going waste"
... Ringing of the Division Bell has begun. You're thanking Floyd... and your Mom.
"So what do you study?". Pause on Pink Floyd. Time to assimilate question. (Not really. Surely you did not expect her to ask if you thought Henry would leave Arsenal and move to Barcelona next season even after a fariytale Highbury farewell yesterday.)
"Engineering. Just completed Second Year." Please, can you go back to your Floyd now?
"Which college?"
"IIT-Madras" and you wait for it. It's about the only joy you get from studying where you study. You say IIT-M and you wait for the reflexive raise of both eyebrows right up to the hairline, a moment of shock, then an approving nod and a smile and then one prolonged period of silence to contemplate how to continue the conversation, now that you've stopped being human and become an IITian. Most people make it up to Which Branch? and then they stop. The Mami stuck perfectly to the script.

As you near the room with the EVM, there'll be this huge poster with all the candidate's names and symbols and stuff that a person with a 5/20 vision could read. And then there'll be another poster, albeit smaller, about how to operate the EVM. Yeah, you push the Button... you don't know how they managed to make it a 6-step process. Ok, so the last step is that in case any of the above 5 fail, you go and rat about it to some officious looking guy over there. And he'll not be able to do anything much about it. Whatever.

Now you would've proudly entered the booth, handed in your voter slip to the guy with the list and shown your Driving License for Identity proof (Yes, they allowed it, yay!). Once the guy finds your name in the list, he'll call it out so loud, you'd think they'd just found India's Most Wanted and expect at any moment to be surrounded by Black Cats or Blue Cows or some other such colourful animal. But nothing of that sort happens, it's just said out loud to ensure that all the agents of the candidates know who all have voted... they have the same list too.

The Poll ka Dot. It is supposed to be a dot, right? Your index finger on the table, wiped clean off any grime you migh have picked up on the 20-meter walk from home to polling booth, and you're expecting a dot to be placed at the intersection of skin and nail. But no, depending on the generosity of the applier, you will get a thick strip of nearly half the width of the finger, running all the way from the first joint to the tip of the finger. You're going Dude, this is a voting booth, not a Mehendi ceremony. But once again prudence, and more importantly, the size of that guy play a decisive role in your appreciating the value of silence.

After that it's nothing, really. Sign next to your name on another list, as you have done a countless times in the examination halls of your college, go into that cardboard-protected booth with the EVM and push the button. There'll be a beep sound, at which all the election people will start clamouring Aan, that's all, that's all for everyone. And no no, you cannot say, I KNOW that's all, I read that outside. Prudence.

And you come out of the room and look around, and the girl in the Orange Tee and the Three-fourths just comes out of the room for 181. Briefly your eyes meet, and you contemplate whether to let a hint of smile show. You're still holding eye-contact, and you're still thinking... but hey, that's another story!