Four things I learnt from Chetan Bhagat's Facebook political mood poll

If you’re the kind who checks Murakami Fan’s Twitter timeline anxiously every morning and have vowed to give up ice-cream in exchange of Neil Gaiman replying to your tweet, your nightmares probably come in the shape of sentences like this one: ’eye-talk is more effective than word-talk’. You’re right, Govinda had told you so, way back in 1998 when Dulhe Raja happened to this world, changing with it how the world was to view the talents of an average Indian man and the butter-chicken love he wears on his waist. Proof’s below:

Several years later, the philosophy re-surfaced in a Chetan Bhagat novel and that’s where I quoted the line from. Basically to say, that you might be a literature snob and will allow Bhagat a small corner of your life where he jostles for space with Salman Khan, but you cannot overlook the multitude of reasons that you should thank the man for. Bhagat, that is. One, people in India were reassured that its not just its women, who are faced with the onslaught of sexual violence in the country, they have the rupee for company . Then, for a moment, though he sent panic waves by hinting he might join politics, he didn’t - leaving just one Rahul Gandhi to make the English dictionary weep. And now, for this - the Facebook political mood survey he kicked off a couple of months back to gauge the mood of the country prior to the polls. [caption id=“attachment_1444577” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Chetan Bhagat’s statistics. Facebook[/caption] For this, he would put up status updates like this: “Hit Like if you support Congress in Lok Sabha 2014”. He has ones with AAP and BJP too.  Based on the number of likes his post gets, he creates a bar graph every month to indicate the dominant political mood in the country. No prizes for guessing that the BJP bar towers over the AAP and Congress bars in his personal poll. However, something really strange happened in the past few days. The Congress likes went up to 15 percent in his polls, when in the earlier ones they somehow managed to get no more than five percent. Flummoxed by the sudden turn of Congress’ fortunes, Bhagat posted this with the results from his polls: “Survey 6 results. Sudden big jump for Congress, which happened last night. Cong always came around 5%. Now Cong at 15%. Seems strange. See my post asking the question earlier, to see where the likes have come from for the Cong. Anything fishy?"  Now, there’s no credible reason to question this right? It’s a completely foolproof poll used by informed, active, concerned, politically opinionated people who did not join Facebook to stalk people, play Farmville or butcher the spelling of ‘friendship’. BJP has more than 30,000 likes, Congress about 7,000 and AAP approximately 9,000 at this moment. Enough numbers to reinstate any cynic’s faith in the utility and relevance of Facebook. And yes, how pray Congress, managed to churn up 10 percent more votes in the past few weeks? Has Rahul Gandhi decided to quit politics and devote his life to playing Candy Crush Saga on Facebook? No. Has Sonia Gandhi has admitted to be a secret Narendra Modi fan? No. Has Chidambaram decided to promote Narendra Modi to the ninth standard from the eight and hence announced him fit to have a debate with?  No. Has Salman Khurshid admitted he is quitting Congress and preparing to join Bigg Boss? No. Then what? Following is what we learned from his polls: - How big a Modi fan you are depends on the number of ways you can write and say NaMo/Modi  and accessorise the same with punctuation. For eg: Namo Namo Namo (in the tone of a Indian cricket fan watching Ishant Sharma bowling in the slog overs), Namo……… (in the Jai Ho tone), Namo Namah!!!! (in a jagrata/Anuradha Paudwal tone), Modi Modi Modi (in the Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy tune) etc etc. - Congress has fans in Thailand and Turkey. And most of Congress’ ’likes’ comes from abroad. Poll respondents have posted stuff as ones below: Anuj Kapoor  :“Dear Mr. Bhagat this survey no longer makes sense as 70% of those liking the Congress are from outside India- suggesting strongly that Congress is very popular outside India whilst BJP and AAP remains pretty much local… Can you please remove Congress as an option from this survey and include the remaining Desi parties." Basically, Congress is now the Frieda Pinto of Indian politics. Don’t be surprised if Loreal signs up Rahul Gandhi and Woody Allen decides to pay Suresh Kalmadi a visit. - Kejriwal has won the polls. Which you might know hasn’t happened, yet, but still… - Chetan Bhagat has more patience than Meira Kumar. A scroll down the page reveals that the BJP, AAP, Congress fan-boys and girls  mud pelting each other, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, cats, dogs and crows spotted near the homes of the said politicians. Many have also labelled Chetan Bhagat the ‘item boy’ of Indian politics, much to the dismay of Lalu Prasad Yadav. The rest have asked him to write film scripts and find ways to kill his boredom (now ask how any Indian man can successfully achieve the last with no major cricket match on and realise how unfair people are being to Bhagat). Yet, Bhagat doggedly collects and collates data. And keeps making these graphs. If Facebook has a StatueVille, I would totally build one for of him there!