Chhedi is Chaos Co-ord (Miracles do happen!)

Back to this blog after a very long time. Spent the loveliest of times during my 7 day stay in Bombay. I met with over two dozen of my friends from school and college. Went on a shopping splurge with my sister, continuing with my out-of-all-bounds spending. Spent Dec 31 night dancing to some good Bollywood music with my college friends till 4 am. Also finally went to the Town and walked around Fort and Marine Drive and was taken in by the breathtaking buildings and views, all over again. What a lovely place Bombay is! And after the chilly mornings in Ahmedabad, it felt good to be able to go around at night without sweaters and the like!

I went to some colleges on that same trip to distribute brichures for Chaos, WIMWI's cultural extravaganza. One of the colleges was Xavier's. As I walked around the corridors, I wondered about Pratibha Naithanni - the culture cop from the college who has filed many PILs in the Bombay HC over the years regarding adult content on TV. She's the kind of person I do not like much. And suddenly, I glanced over my shoulder and walking next to me was the woman herself! The feeling of aversion that spread into me then was rather strong, and I actually thought that I should try to have a word with her! But I did not. Don't know if I'll ever have that opportunity again.

Will write more about my first few days of term 3 later. But today was the cumulation of an exciting and also wearisome week of elections in WIMWI. Elections here are a happy mean between those in Bombay University, where as far as I know, students elections are non-existent, and those in places like Delhi University, where, my friends tell me, campaigning often degenerates into violence. Elections are very structured and myriad rules restrict campaigning (for example, there is a ban on distributing pamphlets or other printed material).

There were 36 candidates for 12 posts in all, ranging from sole candidate Joel for Cultural Secretary, to 4 candidates for Gen. Secretary. From my dorm, only Chhedi was standing - for the post of Chaos Secretary. As the week between filing of nominations and the actual voting passed, I was distantly involved with two campaigns - Chhedi's and Prostee's (for GS). It was fun to sit with them and watch them prepare their manifestoes and pitches. Even though I was not doing any substantial actual work, the elections were a good excuse for me to stop studying and build up a backlog of readings in the first week of classes itself. I paid for it on election day when I was sitting alone in the library studying on a Friday evening :(

This being my first involvement with an election campaign, I was rather anxious about the process and the results. I was to be Chhedi's polling agent, 'counter' in WIMWIan lingo. After the voting, counting began postwise. Chaos Secretary was the third in line. As I went in (Khajoor was Chhedi's counter too - there were two for each candidate), my anxiety levels rose and perhaps I was more nervous than Chhedi himself! As the votes were counted and it become clear that Chhedi was going to win, I uttered a little cry of joy and relief. Kevin, one of the election monitors, actually had to tell me to not get ahead of myself! But Chhedi had indeed won. As Oka later said, for someone who had fooled WIMWI's professors and TAS recruiters, unsuspecting facchas were a simple task :)

Election night was even otherwise a memorable affair. There were surprises, even though most of the results were on expected lines. Congratulations to all the winners and here's to excellent student governance next year.