It’s quite a sight in the heat. The cops wear Kelvar vests and reinforced knee pads; they have pepper-ball guns strapped to their chest and a revolver at the hip; helmets, billy clubs, a cylinder of mace, are their other accessories; and, thin and shiny blue plastic, meant to tie the hands of those arrested, are coiled a little below the waist. These are the designer police, looking like oversized versions of a nine-year-old boy’s fantasy toys.

But there’s been hardly any protest: this isn’t the season of rage, only of hope. If not for a new future, then at least for a new T-shirt. The Democratic nominee’s face has been painted, printed, stenciled by Warhol imitators. Obama might be in Kansas today, but in Denver he is everywhere. In all colours you can imagine. In contrast, the right betrays a muted sense of colour. All the T-shirts I have seen the right-wing protesters wearing here—their backs proclaiming NOBAMA!—are the hue of deep mud.

Downtown Denver is overrun with delegates. But more than delegates there are the members of the press, nearly three times as many. And more than the press, there are the volunteers, twenty six thousand in all. In a T-shirt culture, this means that as a volunteer you get to wear an orange shirt and say “Welcome to Denver.” “Thank you,” I heard Ted Koppel say, over and over again, as he walked to the Colorado Convention Center this morning.

Perhaps I sound bitter. I have suffered. Each day’s press pass is to be given out new, perhaps out of security reasons, and this means long lines. I have spent more time in lines for the press credentials than in doing anything else. Standing for hours in a queue of foreign journalists, in the corridor of the Hampton Inn and Suites, I have become intimate with the faded brown wallpaper, the potted plastic plants, and the smell of disinfectant.

Today, on the first day of the convention, after having done penance in the line at Hampton Inn and Suites, I attended the first-ever meeting of Indian Americans at a political convention. Organized by a group called Indian American Leadership Initiative, the gathering was held in the Denver Athletic Club, its members working out in the next room on treadmills and elliptical machines.

At the Club, I talked to S R Sidarth, the Indian American youth who, during the 2006 Senate election, became the centre of a media storm. Sidarth had been working on the staff of Democratic candidate Jim Webb in his home state of Virginia. One week in August that year, he was given the task of tracking Webb’s Republican opponent, Senator George Allen. Sidarth would accompany the Senator on his “listening tour” and videotape his speeches. At one of these meetings, in Breaks Interstate Park, Allen had pointed to Sidarth, and having identified him as “macaca or whatever his name is” proceeded to welcome him “to America and the real world of Virginia.”

Allen later denied that he knew that the word “macaca” referred to a species of monkey. He also stressed that he hadn’t meant to malign Sidarth as an immigrant. But Allen, who had even harboured Presidential ambitions, never recovered from the storm of controversy. Sidarth appeared on major television channels; his op-ed was published in the Washington Post. Allen lost the election narrowly by about 9,000 votes out of a total of 2.4 million votes cast. In a tight election year, Sidarth was credited for having helped the Democrats regain the Senate by a single seat.

His parents migrated from India more than two decades ago, and Sidarth was born in Arlington, Virginia. He is now 23, working as a Democratic Party staff-member at this convention. Sidarth told me that he believes that the “macaca” incident guided him to his “calling.” He will work in politics all his life. His enthusiasm for Senator Obama is based on the fact that as a person from a diverse cultural and racial background, Obama understands the place of immigrants in America. Sidarth says, “His story resonates with Indians.”

Sidarth is tall and well-built, with a slightly shy manner, often looking away when making his point. But he was emphatic that there is “unprecedented excitement” about Obama. He said, “This is like a rock concert with the most famous band in the world.”

Journalist, author and academic Amitava Kumar is professor of English at Vassar College, New York.