In a report in The Guardian on April 16, the day India had its first round of polling, Randeep Ramesh enlightened his reader thus: “There are three main groupings [my italics]: the United Progressive Alliance, dominated by the Congress party; the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) [my italics], built around Bharatiya Janata Dal [my italics]; and the Third Front, centred on the Communists.” The report was of course amended, with a clarification at the bottom of the original, thanks to the renewal of a story’s life cycle permitted by web editions.

We’ve just had the second phase of our Lok Sabha elections. Needless to say, the world is watching us. Now there’s something about being conscious of being watched that makes us feel vulnerable, almost exposed to the point of nakedness. We’ve had that feeling before, qualitatively less different than in degree, as Mumbai 26/11 unfolded. The question of baring one’s soul is a play of power between object and observer, between exhibit and viewer, between we the text and they the collective reader. It’s the power that the statue has in Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo”, when it admonishes the admirer: “for here there is no place/ that does not see you. You must change your life” — a paradox where the exhibit becomes the observer and judge. But that admonition, again, is only in your mind. That’s how we all, at every moment, internalise actual or perceived judgments, whether we believe in them or not.

The world, and the British press in its midst for instance, is taking notes, describing and analysing what it sees. And while with British readers more entertainment is intended than education, for us, there’s advice. We suspect “entertainment” because there’s a central, pervasive image — a circus. They don’t use that image themselves. It’s what the egalitarian march of smaller images, colours and adjectives add up to in our minds. What these images — with periodic embellishments as in the predominance of the elephant this time — build is a veritable riot of exotica. There’s a mini dialectics operating here too. For instance, “bullock cart” juxtaposed against “helicopter”, “elephant” vs “executive jet”, “illiterate rural voter” vs “EVM” all lead to the synthesis “India” or “land of paradoxes”.

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