Kingmakers

My debut into MCS was unceremonious, to say the least. It was a baptism. Of fire or water or hailstones I don’t know but it was one nonetheless. I had no time to pretend to be shy or nice. It was October 2018, 6 years ago October 3rd. A day all Mean Girls know what date it is annually. Preparations for MLA Elections was underway. They said ‘oh good you’re here’ and gave me jobs. The first time I gave training to polling personnel, I had never even seen a polling station in my life, is how unprepared I was. And yet how professional I had to be. Nuff said.

It was all about long, sleepless nights when the Champhai election office buzzed with energy interspersed with long yawns, the smell of coffee from a Nescafé vending machine, loud arguments and/or laughter over the various interpretations of Handbooks we carried like they were holy. Very occasionally, a shout of “Pi Kawlte!” would sail through the air; she was usually the referee for any disagreements regarding election matters.

I like to complain. Which turned out to be an acceptable thing during elections because everyone complained all the time anyhow. There were complaints about materials that did not match the mark, materials that could not be sourced locally (and could we buy them from Myanmar? No?), materials that were not enough, materials that were just simply wrong, materials that were in surplus and materials that made a bunch of officers stand around a table and ask this important question: what is this? There were complaints over being requisitioned for election duty. There were complaints about health, weddings, deaths and the election dates that clashed with them. There were complaints over not being served food, being served bad food and also being served good food in small quantities. There were complaints about people who were too demanding and people who were too blasé. There were complaints about long hours, insufficient compensation, irregular file works and shortage of time, energy and resources. There were complaints about headaches, backaches, lack of sleep and an ever-growing flab around the gut from an unhealthy lifestyle.  

Election stories are gold. Some of them might be too colourful for polite society and decent dinners, perhaps, or maybe a touch too sensitive for public consumption. Which is a pity because they are the best ones. If you think about it, the very best stories really do begin with: “This one time, someone was so drunk…” In Mizo humour, you can also work with, “Tualte Vanglaiah chuan…” I bet the updated version for this in a 21st century Indian government servant’s life is, “This one time during Elections…” 

Anything works.

This one time during Elections, we added 10 to 283 and somehow got 296!

This one time during Elections, there was a ghost in our PS that kept calling out our names.

This one time during Elections, a sock and an empty beer can fell out of the gunny bag handed to me by a grinning PrO at the Reception Desk!

Ah. Good times.

It is an uncanny but infallible routine that every time you think you’ve mastered an art, the Election Commission of India would come up with an addition that will stump you. Something like playing a video game where every time you defeat a boss, a tougher boss shows up. Which makes you want to lowkey maim the wiseacre at your training hall who always says: wE diD iT aNotHer wAy laSt tiMe i wAs On eLecTion dUty. I don’t know about everyone else but it makes me want to count to ten but throw a punch at eight.

In the 2023 General Elections, I found myself drafted into the Postal Ballot Team in Aizawl. The first time the team met together, I was given this general warning: PB Work doesn’t stop until a new government is formed. That gave me pause because I had picnics scheduled into my month because I’d just learned swimming a couple of months before and I needed the practice. In case I drowned.

Our PB Headquarter was the general area around the Addl. DC’s chambers in Aizawl DC Office. It seemed to me like most of the time we were making Lists. Frequently, as we approach midnight or thereabouts, our PB Leaders would say things like: “Pi Es, List Making work is basically Christian work. You can only enter Heaven if you’re on the Nunna Bu List. And you can only vote by post if you’re on Our List”. The constant Nunna Bu equivalency to Electoral Roll still amuses me today.

There was no calendar in the ADC office. No wall clock. And just the one standard red-and-blue office ballpoint pen. A bit barebones, I said. Perfect place to handle postal ballots as it turned out, because what did time matter when you have ballot papers to issue, registers to fill up, envelopes to organize, endless papers to fold, and, most importantly, lists to make? Because Nunna Bu, if you remember. 

Once the work went into full swing, not only did we not know the hour, we didn’t know the date either. Time doesn’t exist in a Postal Ballot HQ. On October 31, I left my house at 10AM; I never returned that month (which is to say I returned home from office at 2AM on November 1; my driver had a good chuckle over that sleep-deprived muse). PB work also required space for many, many trunks and gunny bags so all that space became quite invaluable!

At college, my roommate and I would wait for English Hour on FM Rainbow at 1AM. We did this for no other reason than we did it. There was no rhyme to it, no reason. Perhaps we stumbled on it one night that we were awake and simply stuck to the schedule. Some nights we’d only be half-awake but we’d wait for 1AM for an hour of English pop music on our phone. This was a time just before Smartphones so perhaps there was some rhyme there, I no longer know. What I do know is that the time surrounding midnight is really dicey and your mind becomes hazy and conversations have a weirdness to it. But if you stick through it, around 1AM your mind is clear again; you can even dance if Back Street Boys plays on the radio. The haze settles around 3AM again, by the by; witching hour, indeed.

During election season in 2023, I noticed this once more. The musings around 12 midnight become slightly unreal. We would often sit around holding cups of red tea and marvel at the logistic humour ingrained in say, AVES. Some nights, someone would mumble something about how it didn’t matter if we did or did not do something because a lot of postal ballots end up dead anyway. Or a wise nod about how the grandma we just buried had availed of Home Voting system so there’s some success story there [her nail was painted indelible ink black in the coffin, ofc]. Or discussions over how we were going to get the policemen stationed outside Mizoram who wanted to vote get to vote just in case they died without voting. It was always something very final. The AVES team brought back quirky stories too. A few someones said they wouldn’t vote because they’ve prayed to God about it and there was no need to vote ‘as though I don’t believe in God’; perhaps SVEEP should do a sweep on the elderly population. Or someone had died before poll day; very morbid, AVES.

Another thing I found really interesting was how much people would shout at you when you handle manual registration for voting. My experience up to that point in this regard was Roll Revision exercises. I had braced myself for that exercise and was good by then. Postal Ballot registration was slightly different because they were already in the roll; a lot more temporary but a lot more urgent. I was told to just hear people out. Difficult exercise for my temperament. There was a seeming desperation to vote which felt like a wind of change of sorts; a political awakening, perhaps. After a bit, I began to think, though, that a lot of them were only ultimatums just to get out of poll duties. Even so, it was interesting to speculate how well the turnout would be. 2023 was a few units lower than 2018, as it happened.

The days before and during Elections, you meet all sorts of people. The range is amazing. Some you work with, some you check, some you play nice with. In the end, someone announces the result and the cloud descends and business resumes as usual, except everything has suddenly changed. The King is dead, long live the King? Sunshine and midnight rain.

Sometime before I joined the service, I had been asked: why would you want to join MCS – all you’ll do is make kings of men to rule over you and then deal with land revenue? I haven’t really dealt with land overmuch. I am Election Officer and Settlement Officer in Hnahthial so that’s going to be interesting but I'm still only a couple months in at the moment. I have however been engaged in electing a new government a few times since 2018. Kingmakers of a different order, I suppose. Perhaps in the bureaucratic end. I realise this is honest, solid work. There is satisfaction, albeit sometimes grim, in the way we handle our business. I am sure the Kingmakers of the political order have new business now too. We all live to fight another day.

I dream of writing an article that makes me sound like a Statesman. But you can only write about what you know. And what I know is what I experience and what I experience is somehow always a little unhinged. Like attracts like? So I end up writing about slightly crazy things that make people question either my sanity or my veracity. (Veracity: a nice, responsible sounding word, that I never use in normal days.) Perhaps someday.

It is what it is.