There have been highs and lows during the country\u2019s long voting period. Now pessimism is setting in<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I will vote. I\u2019ll probably walk to the same mid-20th century bungalow that I walked to five years ago \u2013 it was once a primary school my daughter went to \u2013 where you vote in a room on the margins of the open space that was a playground. It is a site in which the ballot is cast (or the button pressed) in the upper middle-class neighbourhood of Ballygunge in Kolkata. It has a historic serenity \u2013 even an optimism, given its immediate pedagogical past \u2013 that may not be typical at all of the circumstances of voting in India.<\/p>\n
The general elections are, however, always largely orderly (\u201clargely\u201d being a crucial qualifier). This one hasn\u2019t been very different in that regard. After I vote, I expect to receive an indelible ink mark that will stretch vertically on my forefinger from the cuticle to the skin below it; somehow, like a memory that was once all-important, it will fade after a few days. There have been stories about people who have managed to get the mark off; one of them, who voted eight times for the Bharatiya Janata party, was arrested.<\/p>\n