Srishti Singh

   There were lights, lots and lots of them. And the music of hundreds of DJs sang to the thumping of the latest Bollywood item songs. The vehicles carrying these DJs formed a long train of mismatching music. Kajrare Kajrare was followed by Bol Bam , followed by Desi Boys . Beneath these sound trains, men and women danced to celebrate. Men, mostly. Women, few. Men, unafraid. Women, meek. Men, drunk. Women, careful. They danced. And thousands of others just came to see the show. On roads, over the bridge, on the ghat, they were everywhere.   As we made our way through tens of abandoned empty pandals, pink, purple, and green, whose idols had been stripped off the mighty spots where they were showered with flowers, sweets, and money for three days, the suddenly missing long lines at Puchka thelas made me want to stop. Duty comes first. My men dropped off the siren-clad car of mine pretty early. They then turned into traffic hawaldars, using their hands to shoo away the obl...

                                                       In the sound of the gushing waves, and the sun burning over our heads, my first visit to my election constituency, at the first instance, was scenically pleasant. Only scenically. Only at the first instance. As our DDMA speedboat cut through the waters of the mighty river, the faces of the inhabitants of the Chars struck like thunderbolts. Their eyes were questioning us as to how Sarkaari Babus had finally reached this place. Multiple shifts in the islands, sometimes due to the changing course of the river and sometimes for the sake of accommodating ‘development’, had left the inhabitants rather scared of speedboats. Their questioning eyes only made the islands grim. In a span of kilometers, the islands showed no trace of ‘development’ in the form of roads, electricity poles, or bustling civiliz...