Bushwhacked

All news sites, news channels, discussion forums, weblogs and some sophisticated tea-kada benches were discussing this as if their lives depended on it. It is official now, and Spot gets to generate as much trash as it could inside the white house for another four years, while others get a chance to do the same outside of it. Bush joins the elite club of defiers alongside JJ and Rabri as extraordinary specimens who play a practical joke on the press when they are looking elsewhere by somehow conjuring a victory, something akin to creeping up from behind and saying "Boo".

With bush and kerry appearing on all forms of media, the creative heads in india racked up their brain that bit too hard and guess what, they came up with a mock-election for the american presidency in chennai at the Taj, jointly organised by some american cultural mission and the embassy, reads The Hindu. Some sort of black humor i presume. Our folks got so over-enthu that people came and queued outside the hotel long before the mock-voting started. Folks have gurgled a keresone-looking liquid when pepsi called it "The Color of Team India" during the cricket world cup, and bought tonnes of Fair and Lovely when dark-complexioned women are stereo-typed (am so glad nandita das didnt fall for these ads, that would've been heart-breaking) during beauty paegants, but being bored to death sounds an infinitely honorable option than to go early for a mock election of the american president.

For all that i know, the american elections are so slow that they would give balumahendra's telefilms a run for sweet money. There are only two parties, which means, you vote for one guy or you vote for the other guy or you vote for some millionaire who wanted to be on prime time television. Is that it ?? No freedom of choice ?? When we have elections here, one would see harmless-looking next-door neighbors file nominations and scream their throat out about how they are just that one step away from making saidapet the next singapore, while in reality their wives keep kicking them out of bed for not fixing that leak in the gas pipe. Their aspirations are pretty limited though; Their vote count needs to be just one more than the number of adult blood-relatives they have, and if they do, they'd feel victorious and later return to fix up leaking gas pipes with double the enthusiasm.

So, let me get this straight. There are no book length ballot papers, no buying of opposition MPs, no hiding them in unheard-of resorts and making them appear in the house out of nowhere, no veshtis but only pin-striped shirts and suits, no ballot snatching and most of all, the loser actually concedes defeat instead of ranting. Gee, Is this an election or some sort of spiritual exercise ?? In accordance with the latest trends, I guess they should start outsourcing elections to india and the pros will tell them how to go about running one.