A Mixed Feeling..

I will be breaking my daily posting
for the first time tomorrow.

It is a mixed feeling.

The break is one way due to
traveling which may be routine
in the life of a person living away
from family.

But the mixed feeling is not because of travel.

It is because of the destination.

My destination is my voting booth.

Yeah, I am traveling for
casting my vote.

A couple of weeks before
I had resigned to not going to India.
There were obstacles.
There was a sprain in the left knee
which scared me traveling to and
fro without much rest.

As such I am prone to
knee pains during air travel.
And if the travelling is both ways
in a matter of 2 to 3 days,
I was not sure - I was saying No
to myself!

To make matters worse,
my on line reservation failed.

I was snappy and called up
my wife to say I am not coming.
She also added a note:
it is too hot here, you did the correct thing.

I also consoled myself
that NRIs are so far away,
not every one could go to India and vote.
There has to be another solution.
The Election Commission should
do something about it.
There must be a way to enable
votes, may be votes on line.
What is not possible with today's
technology, that too, for India?

Then came an email
campaigning against wasting vote
for the politicians who do not deserve our
vote in the first place.

this forcefully presented
argument, what with
the perks that MPs enjoy,
the costs that go from
the tax payers,
so on and so forth -
was a bolt from the blue.

i was as such
persuading people one way or other
to cast their vote.
this email against voting
was heavy for me.
i made a passionate appeal
to the associates from whom
the appeal not to vote had come.
i do not know what happened to
my appeal.

but i was very emotional about this appeal.

i thought only casting the vote
is the true tribute to
the sacrifices our
forefathers made,
through their sufferings
and sacrifices.

this vote has not come that easily to us.
there are a very few countries
which went for an adult franchise
for everyone without
any discrimination in terms of
caste, religion and gender.

by not casting the vote
because we do not agree with the way
the politicians conduct themselves,
we only strengthen
vote bank politics which encourages
voters to elect politicians who
divide India.

India needs very badly
those votes which are cast
without caste, religion or any
sub national interest in mind.
Those votes are with us,
who can think independently
and trust the best among the
candidates with our vote and
demand our rights from the
representative we elect.
By absenting from this process,
we weaken democracy.

An eerie silence befell upon me
after my hard and impassioned
persuasion with voters who were
unlikely to vote..

What was I doing after all?
I felt invited.
It was as if India was beckoning me.
It was as if my motherland valued
that single vote I could cast.

I did not take much time to rethink.

When I called up my mother,
she said something to me,
that summed up my mixed feelings:
"so this trip you are making as
citizen of India"

Tomorrow, this blog hour,
I will be mentally in Creatiwe!

In the midst of clouds,
my thoughts will be
around what I could write in
Creatiwe!

It is a mixed feeling,
not because I am traveling and
taking a break from my blog,
but because my
destination is for my voting booth,
thousands of miles away and
still close to my heart,
as close as my motherland!