A tale of two cities
Mumbai is voting. Across a basketball court inside an "international" school turned polling station in the posh Cuffe Parade area, turnout is a steady trickle. On a notice board outside, the school promises "piped music, air-conditioned classrooms, biometric attendance and wireless internet", among other things, to its students.
Unsurprisingly, the school is in one of the city's smartest neighbourhoods and part of the south Mumbai constituency, infamous for its apathy to politics. Turnout in this constituency has barely touched 30% in previous elections.
I bump into Shilpa Khandelwal, a young clothes designer. She has just cast her ballot at a polling booth at the school. The booths are examples of modest Indian ingenuity: small cubbyholes are partitioned and covered by white cloth and held together by bamboo near the school's hard basketball court.
Ms Khandelwal talks briskly, exuding a confident air. "You know what, the rich and upper middle classes have made a mistake by staying away from politics here," she tells me.
"Politicians are only looking at slums in this debauched voting system," she says with a hint of anger in her voice.
So she has decided to rectify the mistake by casting her ballot this time. It helped that she attended a talk recently about the virtues of the vote; it helped her to understand why ballots can make a difference, "however small".
"I don't remember the person who gave us the talk. But he told us how important it is to vote. We can influence and change a lot of things, even in a small way, by voting" she smiled.
Ms Khandelwal hopes that this time residents of south Mumbai - where last November's bloody attacks took place - will wake up and vote in large numbers. It's three hours into the voting, and she feels that turnout still looks a tad thin.
"For me," she says, "the issues are of good governance, improved security, infrastructure, education". I ask her whether she has a regular supply of drinking water and electricity.
"Oh, all that is fine here."
On the other side of the basketball court, the poor and the hoi polloi of the area vote. They live and work on the margins of this constituency. Shaila Kara Naqvi is waiting for her husband, who owns a small shop selling electrical goods. He is voting inside. She says civic amenities are shabby where she stays. "We have lot of problems with water and electricity. Water just comes on the tap for one hour every day."
On two sides of the basketball court, in the same polling station in one of the country's richest constituencies, India's class divide is stark. On one side, the rich and successful walk in holiday wear to cast their vote and exchange merry banter. Across the court, tired-looking men and women in frayed shirts, saris, kurtas and a lone Muslim in a fez cap queue up to vote. There is almost an unconscious acquiescence in this social segregation.
Three hours into the voting here, and 10% of the ballots have been cast, a polling official tells me. It's still a long day ahead, so polling may well pick up. There are 20 candidates in the fray here - nine of them are independent ones, including a leading woman banker who has taken a sabbatical from her job to run.
I take my leave and hit the Mumbai roads. I pass small queues of voters outside polling stations, a movie hall showing a film called My Mom's Latest Boyfriend, a huge billboard for a hotel saying "Beauty is skin deep" and yet another gem of an English language tutorial poster which says, "Speak English like James Bond!" I am on the way to Palli Hill, a leafy hilltop neighbourhood where many of the Bollywood stars live. A colleague tells me one of the stars is planning to vote soon.
Speculation is rife among the journalists waiting outside a school in Palli Hill when I arrive there. One voter reports having seen a superstar of yesteryear casting his ballot. Another excitedly adds that a famous lyricist has also been seen. Photographers excitedly click pictures of a middle aged man helping an ailing man inside the polling station. When I ask whether one or both of the men are stars or actors, one of them says, "I don't know. I just took no chances".
A hefty man in a black tee-shirt is walking down a steep decline which leads to the school. His tee-shirt says "I bullshit when I'm pissed". He says he is 62 years old and this is the first time he is turning out to vote in his life. Why now? I ask of the Palli Hill voter.
"I used to be in and out of the country a lot. Hah. People here thought I was a Pakistani!"
The man is aware that his tee-shirt is attracting a lot of attention. "Hah," he says triumphantly. "All these years the politicians bullshitted us. Now we are about to bullshit them! Hah!"
A few kilometres away from the fun and gaiety of Palli Hill, polling is serious business in a prison-like municipal school in the Khar area. The area, my friends here say, is a combustible mix of out-of-town migrants and local Marathis living in orderly cardboard and tin boxes along the pavement.
There is a rush of voters at the door of the school building. Women giggle when I ask them questions in Hindi. My friend here who speaks Marathi takes over. They tell her stories of trudging miles to fetch drinking water, and how their shanties are being demolished to make way for high-rises. Here, polling officials say nearly 20% of the voters have already voted within five hours of polling on a hot and sultry morning. For the poor of Mumbai, the vote still holds out the promise of better times. Dreams die hard in this city of dreams.
