Short Story Social – Every small thing counts
Photo credit: veggiegretz from morguefile.com
No party can do more development than us, if people want more development, vote us. When we come back to power, we will make sure each and every single road in this constituency gets renovated, we will supply drinking water to each and every house.. The man behind the mike is speaking at the peak of his voice, he got some special charm and people around looked convinced with his words and shown their acceptance with loud cheers and clapping.
I grew-up reading about speeches of great leaders, but never heard one. Today I felt that I heard one.
It was never my cup of tea to attend these kind of meetings, and even today I just happened to stop by on my way to meet my friends, our daily ritual to meet in the dhaba outside our town and have chit-chat session.
The words of the man behind the mike are echoing in my ears, I was wondering if this man gets elected again then what a good life my town can have!!
I was on my way to dhaba with lot of excitement, to discuss this thing with my friends. The moment I saw my friends, I said “Guys, we should vote for this man Narayan, he has power of changing the future of this town, like he did in last five years…”
“Do you want something to drink?” My friend interrupted me showing no interest in what I was saying. Yes, we all come from rich families, we never bothered about voting, more over we were never dependent on government schemes to sustain. And, we never had to go to any government office to get work done. So, government meant nothing for us.
Till the election day, I followed all the happenings of the Voting campaigns, poll surveys and everything about Election. I was waiting for the election day with loads of excitement, to cast my vote to Narayan. Finally, the day had come and I went to polling booth. I was standing in the queue for almost an hour before my turn arrived.
“Your name, please?” The lady with the big list in front of her asked me. Akhil I replied. “Show me the voter ID”, she continued after a moment. I felt so guilty about my ignorance having realized that I don’t have voter id at all, I never bothered to register myself. I didn’t knew what to say her, I just turned back and moved out of polling station with utter disappointment. More than disappointment, it was my ignorance and negligence that made me curse myself over and again for next few days.
I was sitting in front of the TV and watching the results. Narayan was leading only by few hundred votes, and only two thousand votes left to be counted. Results can go either way. I was in shock, when I heard the news scrolling “Narayan’s defeat” only by a vote. I never thought, a single vote can make such a difference, not just me nobody does. I wanted to go back in time and get voter id for myself and my friends and make Narayan win. Restlessness grew in me, I felt my vote could have made Narayan to win the Elections battle. This mistake of mine continued haunting me for few months.
As usual one day, we all friends were sitting in dhaba and this time it was my friend siddarth’s party for his father’s win for a major contract. Surprisingly he won this contract over recently elected MLA, who is notorious for winning contracts for his men with his money and muscle power, and this is the first time he lost the contract.
Two days later, I woke up to my friends phone call to hear shocking news of siddarth’s father death. It was an open secret that it must have been the MLA, key man behind the murder. But, as usual police registered a case and said they will investigate and it would have been greedy had we expected them to finish investigation one day and arrest MLA. And, they never did.
My friends who teased me, when I talked about voting to Narayan, have realized today what a big mistake they had committed and how indirectly they took part in siddarth’s father murder.
“Every drop makes an ocean”, so does every vote helps build this nation and remove corrupted, criminal people from getting elected.
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