Look, I voted: Voter selfie wave trumps Modi tsunami

Manicurists must have had a busy day in Mumbai on Wednesday. Every celebrity worth her Himalayan pink rock salt surely needed one to ensure that that inked finger held up for the cameras on voting Thursday would be picture perfect. But in case the paparazzi missed a celeb, or God forbid abandoned him for a bigger fish, all was not lost. That finger could be selfied, Facebooked and tweeted out to a world at large that was apparently waiting with bated breath. Voting has traditionally been a duty for some, a chore for others. The voting ink mark is meant to prevent fraud. But in the age of social media it has become a fashion accessory, indelible proof that the socialite has a social conscience. And where better to flaunt it that on social media? Voting is no longer complete without the voting selfie. [caption id=“attachment_1497985” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Amitabh Bachchan with his indelibly inked finger: Pic courtesy Twitter[/caption] Once the act of voting ended inside the booth. Now the act of voting is just the means to an end. The selfie moment is what we are waiting for. So Amitabh Bachchan wraps himself in a shawl in the middle of a heat wave and displays his inked finger (and presumably his topnotch air conditioning). Preity Zinta holds her inked finger to her lips as if to say Shhh, the actress is voting. Sachin Tendulkar surely chose that strange crocodile pad shirt for his selfie portrait as much as Sussanne Khan selected that bright orange nail polish to contrast with the black ink of her voter mark. Shah Rukh Khan went to vote in his Kolkata Knight Riders t-shirt signaling that the IPL was as much our civic duty as voting. Then he put up his super cool black and white selfie with his voter mark fetchingly matching his facial hair. It’s all just so unbearably cool. No wonder thousands of us have followed suit flooding each other’s timelines with our own voting selfies. I don’t know about a Modi tsunami but there’s certainly a voter selfie wave. The selfie barrage is so overwhelming a friend put up this Facebook status: “Breaking News: Election Commission of India has confirmed that your Vote will be counted even if you don’t upload finger mark pic on Facebook.” And those who have to wait till 12 May for their selfies can only chew their finger nails in frustration. But not too much. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard it too needs to be ready for its close-up. The irony is the selfie was originally a way to document a moment when no one else was around to capture it for you. The actual moment of voting is in fact exactly such a selfie-moment. Unfortunately no mobile phones are allowed in the booth. So we just recreate it later for posterity. Of course, by then, in real life there’s no shortage of cameras to record that voter mark. Our celebrities have paparazzi trampling over each to document every move they make. In fact, my local Bangla television channels broke away from agitated reporters standing in heatwave-inducing sun talking about bombs going off on voting day in Murshidabad and allegations of EVM fraud in Balurghat because Sachin Tendulkar was emerging from a polling booth in Mumbai. It makes you wonder what will happen if India becomes a democracy where there is no need to ink the finger anymore. An I Voted button or sticker as they have in the United States are just poor substitutes for civic cool compared to the indelibly inked finger. What’s most amusing about celeb-selfie is that voting is actually the one act where even the lowliest Indian is on par with the VVIP. Sure, the VVIP might skip the snaking line but all of us, even Sharad Pawar, have exactly one vote and theoretically we can do whatever we want with it. And the poorest Indian’s vote counts for exactly as much as the richest Indian’s vote. But then along comes the celeb selfie. Look at me, it preens. I am so cool. I voted. Ain’t I special? Actually, no. Glad you took the time to vote, but no it doesn’t make you anymore special than the millions of other Indians who did exactly the same, some of them taking days off from their work to travel across the state on trains and buses back to their villages for an act of electoral duty that will be marked but un-selfied. Meanwhile even as India’s rich and famous flaunt their inked fingers proudly, inspiring thousands among the rest of us to copycat them, some parts of the country have not got the memo. The Aam Aadmi Party claims huge vote rigging in Mewat in Haryana saying one person cast the votes of scores of others. Voting was apparently 78 percent in district headquarter Nuh but as Indian Express reports people scurry off when asked to show the indelible ink mark. Everyone has their own excuse for the missing mark from “my religion does not allow me to offer namaaz if I have any mark painted on my body” to “harvesting”. If the voter selfie craze actually reaches Mewat one day, perhaps that moment of civic narcissism will do democracy some actual good in Ink-credible India.