India - Part III

Oops, forgot something. It's election time in India at the moment, which means every vertical surface has an election poster glued to it, from walls, to rocks, to old ladies too slow to get out of the way. Maybe because there is not a lot of TV coverage, election news is broadcast by cars with loudspeakers. The posters, meanwhile, just have mugshots of smiling politicians, smiling the smile of men thinking about how much loot they will embezzle once elected. ALL the photos are either mugshots or full body shot of the guy walking or, occasionally, shots of the politicians AND their cronies. So lots of pics of Sonya Ghandi and VJ Singh in the background...

And it's funny, but I think the policy of saturating the populace with photos of politicians backfires as you get sick to death of seeing their stupid faces. For example, as we left Munnar there were two guys running localls: Congress and the Commies. Now, the Commie looked right dodgy and the Congress guy looked like a kind and benevelont uncle. But after an hour and about 4,000 posters, you start to notice the beadiness of the eyes, the shifty look, and the hint of evil. And pretty soon, you hate the guy from Congress (and the Commie, who is still right dodgy, but now also a child molester), and you know that if you saw him, you'd get out of the car and punch him in his stupid smiling face.

But then you cross an electoral border and the posters change, and finally you're looking at a Communist who has the look of a guy who tortures kittens, a Congress guy who looks a little gay, and photos EVERYWHERE of Raul F-ing Ghandi, one of the million or so Ghandis (some free, some in jail but still running) that seem to dominate Indian politics.

Would you trust this man?

Or this one?

And what the hell? Communists? Didn't India learn anything from 1991?