Comic Book Campaigning

Who is in the cartoon?

Who is the joke on?

Is it

The mock earnest neta

Thinking he's got the moves

Stats, demographs, castes, segments, splits, bits

Professing instant love-

For ALL

The, Those

Abstract hordes-

Or the unimpressed janta

That very tangible bussed in

barricaded

herded

rehearsed

Told

New pajama and turban clad

They're trucked in but untricked

A kind of professional too

They know the rates

And the perks of their participation

And are

Too inured to be conned-

Crowds are crowds but votes are votes.

The pitch from the platform

Suggests lullabies for idiots

Dumb lines

Written by contemptuous cowboys

Riding the campaign bus

The rent a crowd

Waves the provided party flags

And thinks of the money

The outing

The food

The drink

Maybe a trick or two

Admires the helicopters

Careful not to yawn at the promises

Claps because the crowd meisters want you to

They watch you

And won't pay for lack of enthusiasm.

The TV channels

Frantic for TRP

Don't want to be too deep

Cut complexity

Project tamasha cliches

The hot-aired speculation

The heat and dust

The crushed flowers

Cops

Lal battis

Convoys

Crowds

The easy listening sound bytes.

The papers trying out their trial balloons

Trying to hide their biases

Like indelible tattoos but couched in reasonableness

Sucking up because sucking up now is being counted

And later it will mean

Money and junkets

Awards and prominence

TV

Maybe Internet too

Though

You need to be on the winning side

Or no more wrong than the next scribe.

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2012