Ashwin Upadhyaya's Blog

Pessimism is the worst type of communicable disease. Even the best vaccine won’t make you completely immune.

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty –the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. -Mark Twain

And so, I fought at the polling booth. I knew, each of the candidates at my constituency were equally undeserving. But, they still are the ones who represent the democracy. The only other option for me would have been standing myself for the election. Not enough drive. So, I went to vote.

As it always happens with me, I had to fight to even vote (Think of what it would take to stand for election). The election rolls had an extra ‘i’ after my name. As a result, the presiding officer asked me to bring all possible documents to prove my existence!!! It was my duty after all and I did as he said. Now, he was not the only one to decide whether I exist or not. There were 3 uneducated party workers sitting inside the booth whose permission had to be taken before the officer could grant me existence. Then started the following conversation:

Officer:             Can we allow him to vote?
Party workers: We don’t know. Its your wish.
Officer:             I can’t allow without your permission.
Party workers: We can’t take responsibility
Officer:             Have you seen this person?
Party workers: No. We haven’t
Officer:             They say, they haven’t seen you?
Ashwin:            Sir, how can you expect them to know every person in my locality?
Officer:             It looks like a spelling mistake. Could we allow him to vote?
Party workers: We don’t know.

This really got my blood boiling. Who were these uneducated fellows who knew nothing more than “We don’t know” to decide my existence. A verbal fight began which I don’t want to reproduce here and after 10-15 minutes, I had the blue ink on my finger.

My spirit is contended.