The first time I got my voter’s ID was when I turned 18 and was gung-ho about getting the indelible ink put on my left index finger after having exercised my right to vote.
Having had a change of address when my family moved to a new house circa November 2003 resulting in a consequent change in both the legislative assembly constituency as well as the parliamentary constituency, it was time to get another voter’s ID done.
However, I had to miss out on getting my ID issued when the rest of my family was having theirs done for the same reasons as I missed out on gatecrashing RJ Malavika’s wedding with Madman Aadisht (comments should indicate why such an action wouldn’t be undertaken even if I were in town).
When the electoral officials declared that there would be another round that would take place on 19th September 2008, I decided to get my card for it provided me with the ideal opportunity to play hooky from the office and not feel guilty about doing so.
When friday morning dawned, I was in for quite a surprise, because the government school where I was to get my ID done was not the one in the vicinity of my house, but one that was about two kilometres away in a village named maTTikyatanahaLLi.
Just as backgroud information, the place we live in is quite far removed from Mysore city, for unlike in Bangalore, if someone lives outside the Ring Road that surrounds the city, they are considered to be living on the outside of the outskirts.
Hence the place we live in is unblemished by the ways of the city life and is a peaceful and quiet sub-urb of sorts. Unmitigated bliss are there.
This explains why the whole hoopla of having to go to some random village transpired and now, I can actually get on with the narrative.
The walk to the village from our area was quite a pleasant one that afforded quite a few opportunities to take photographs, some of which I’m going to put up on my flickr account if I don’t feel too lazy later on.
When I got to the school after cutting through some fields and seeing a live mongoose cross the road without a care in the world, and also being witness to what I can only term as two buffaloes making out in a shallow pool of muddy water, I was quite surprised at how I enjoyed myself completely during the entire unplanned walk across semi dried up lakes and farmland, rendering me oblivious to the large distance I walked in order to get to my destination.
At the school, it was absolute mayhem as some lucky class was given the day off in order to accommodate this particular exercise. I saw kids peeping into the room where the photo IDs were being issued and giving all the assembled adults furtive glances, some of whom they were no doubt related to.
The queue was quite long, and the villagers were cutting in without any heed being paid to the protests by those behind them, who weren’t entirely overjoyed at the prospect of having to wait for longer than was necessary. So much so that some woman cut right in front of me, and stood her ground despite my repeated protests, which I realize in retrospect sounded more like polite implorings than anything else. Also, I Wasn’t keen on picking a fight with someone from the village because I was in unfamiliar territory and I guess I have to thank my lucky stars that I knew to speak the local language and have myself understood.
There were two main things that happened that morning that will remain in my mind for a long time to come. The first thing was not so funny, despite being superficially so.
The photo station was manned by some guy who had some basic expertise in operating a laptop with a webcam, and he was in charge of getting people’s photographs clicked. Most of the villagers that came to the school had no clue about their dates of birth and thus were not sure about their age. On being asked to provide their age / DOB, they were quite clueless. Some of them managed to give out a rounded off number while some others were assigned a number (usually a multiple of five or ten) by the guy behind the laptop.
A woman changed her age from 30 to 45 to 40 and finally settled on 37 because some guy was kind enough to calculate the mean of her maximum and minimum age. While this might seem quite funny, with the villagers having a hearty laugh when someone who was 50 saying he was 35 and all that, it showcased the basic issue of illiteracy among those in the villages to a large extent. While we monitor our ages, wait for our birthdays as occasions to celebrate and cherish, most of these people just struggle to make a living and are oblivious to regular things that you and I would take for granted and this particular incident was quite an eye-opener in this regard.
The second incident, which was quite funny was something I had anticipated. With three names that comprise of a family name, a given name and a surname (out of which I generally tend to drop the first one off), I knew that the probability of some fudge up taking place with the spelling tended towards one, and my fears were not unfounded, for the laptop guy, despite my having given him my old voter’s ID, mis-spelt two out of three words in my name, and made them all as part of one word.
(Turns out that the same mistakes were done for my folks’ voters IDs as well, but quite unusually, despite being highly vocal in their protests towards anything under the sun, as opposed to their easy going offspring who say ‘Meh’ for most things, they didn’t bother getting a correction made.)
After I recovered from the initial shock and shook myself off all the painful memories I’ve had since I could spell my name, when I found out much to my continued disappointment that others couldn’t, I launched into a vehement protest to get my ID done the way it was supposed to be. The official was not used to this, given the fact that he’d randomly assign ages and spell peoples’ names the way he wanted to, and after almost twenty minutes of arguements, I was finally given an opportunity to get a duplicate ID done.
Much to my disappointment, they took the misspelt ID from me and said I could keep it only if I could provide them with INR 25. Stupidly, I hadn’t carried any money with me and by the time I returned home, I was too lazy to go back to get it from them.
All in a day’s work. Whoever said getting a Voter’s ID card done is a cinch should be made to go through what I did on that fateful friday.
Soooooper!!!!
@Mukesh,
thanks! Keep coming back for more!