At Los Alamos, when the first atom bomb was tested, Robert Oppenheimer recited the verses from the Bhagavad Gita about the viratswaroop that Krishna reveals to Arjun. As the huge explosion became a mushroom cloud, he described the light which emanated from the bomb as ‘brighter than a thousand suns’.

The sight of Indian voters is to me an awesome one. The phenomenon of millions waiting patiently outside voting booths, displaying their voter identity cards, is not something we should ever take for granted. Men and women have insisted on exercising their franchise as if all through our history there had always been a democracy. An ancient culture built on hierarchy and inequality and deference has learnt within a generation or two what it took the West centuries.

Even the Indian quirk that the poor and the rural vote more assiduously than the rich and the urban is wonderful. Of course the poor voter knows that she will only get her pittance if she votes for her vote bank neta or at least tells him that she did. The middle class gets its large subsidy, like the $50-billion petrol subsidy, without trying. How long that will last we shall soon find out.

Next Saturday, the explosion will occur and the full ferocity of the Indian voter, four hundred million plus times multiplied, will be revealed to us all. Even Robert Oppenheimer would be lost for words at this mushroom cloud. The nervousness of the leaders as the final date approaches is palpable. Firm stands taken on so-called grounds of principle about who will and who will not be welcome as coalition partners have collapsed. Every neta is loudly changing his or her tune and telling any other neta who will listen that after May 16 anything will go. There are no certainties about the outcome. Even if there were, no one wants to trust them.

... contd.