You win some, you lose A LOT

hi all

Congratulate me. Pat me on the back. Shake my hand. Crack a joke or two. Feign a laugh as I fake mine. Swear to be my friend forever. Lick my feet for a co-ordship. I'm now the co-curricular affairs secretary of IIT Madras, the first ever "northie" to do it. To win an insti-based election for Shaastra. But at what cost? Why, oh why, did I ever stand for this post? What was I ever thinking?

There are "friends" all around, congratulating me, saying I was worth it. Saying that my opponent deserved to lose. So many of them were openly supportive of me before the elections. Yet, what was the margin? 23 out of 3033 votes!!! Is that all I'm worth?

Barefaced liars. Bastards with no souls. I don't care how many of them even went through my manifesto, went through my credentials. I believe there were only 23 who really did. Those who made the difference. The others? Whores who sold their support for a co-ordship. Prostituted themselves to get a hold on the Saarang bandwagon. Motherf*ers who just saw the names "Uthpala Raghavendra Rao" and "Aditya Pandey" and figured out the longer one made the grade.

They predicted a hands-down victory. They foresaw a 500+ margin. They pledged they knew better than to vote on vague "fundaes". They promised they'd act sensibly and without prejudice. They cheered and applauded at the soapbox. They met me afterward and said I was great. They asserted that they knew me as a person, not as a candidate. Some of them were later surprised to know I'd won.

I always thought that people in general were sensible. The mass was sensible. The majority saw the manifestos and the credentials, and voted with objectivity. It's all wrong! And I thought that this was a pinnacle of an engineering institution, where logic and reason prevailed over regionalism and casteism. Oh, how naive I was! And yet, one expects politics to be clean. The truth is we have the keenest brains here. And that spiderman saying is all hogwash: There's just great power, there's no concept of responsibilty. With great power, comes a large cache of false friends, of sycophants of the highest orders, of two-faced people so full of themselves they'd do anything to be the next me.

And my best friends. I did it for them. To serve what I thought was some sort of "poetic justice". To see to it that their dreams left unfulfilled were finished with my beginning. They turn around now. Look the other way. They say it was a waste of time. It wasn't meant to be.

I am a fluke. I got into this place by accident. I was involved in Shaastra by mere chance. And here I am, a general of a force of enthusiasm, left hanging by the sheerest of margins. My opponent calls up and says "No hard feelings!". I reciprocate. At least he acted sensibly. No one else I know did.

The day is over. A new dawn begins. I must put all this behind me, they say, and work out a new and better beginning. But I am lonesome. I am afraid. I am looking the future in the face and it's staring right back at me. The past meanwhile is chuckling, at my naiveity and inexperience. At my failure to judge. At my over-confidence. At my inability to come to terms with what I thought was right, but in effect was a pile of smelly crap.

So here I am again. I have power. I have responsibility. They expect me to judge truthfully, but discount objectivity for "friendship". Some of them are as afraid as I am. Thinking I will seek "revenge". Contemplating my moves to suck out their blood. Yet claiming to be the truest friends I will ever know.

They congratulate me. They pat me on the back. They shake my hand. They crack a joke or two. The feign a laugh as I fake mine. They swear to be my friends forever. They lick my feet for a co-ordship. I'm now the co-curricular affairs secretary of IIT Madras, the first ever "northie" to do it. To win an insti-based election for Shaastra. But they don't care about what it cost me, emotionally.

Why, oh why, did I ever stand for this post? What was I ever thinking?