Sitting by a window, 30-year-old Raj Kumar Sahani looks out at a narrow lane. There is no sign of the elections here— no flags of political parties, no posters. No one has come to him to ask for his vote so far. Nor has he gone out to see what is happening. It’s difficult for him to: Sahani is paralysed from the waist down.

He is a victim of the blast that rocked Dasashwamedh Ghat on February 23, 2005. Seven persons were killed and over 20 injured in that terror attack. Sahani happened to be there because he earned his living taking tourists on boat rides on the Ganga. Shrapnel pierced Sahani’s spine, paralysing him from below the waist.

From his bed, Sahani has been keeping track of the elections through newspapers and his boatmen friends who drop in occasionally. He waits for any candidate, or political workers to turn up at his door so that he can tell them what people like him, whose lives turned upside down in a moment, expect from them. Or why the issues that they are talking about sound hollow to him.

Candidates in Varanasi are mainly talking about saving the weavers from the current economic crisis and protecting the country from terrorism. “Soniaji talked about it, Murli Manohar Joshi talked about it,” he says. “Joshiji says that his party will uproot terrorism. It is not that easy. That day the entire Ghat was covered with blood in seconds, and there was no warning, no clue,” says Sahani.

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