Shakeel Saifi’s convoy was scheduled to arrive at Chand Cinema in Trilokpuri at 10am on its way to file his nomination as the Lok Sabha candidate for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) from East Delhi. A couple of people are playing cards on the footpath and a man who cleans ears for a living is setting up shop. An old man with cataract-ridden eyes is leaning on his stick and looking into the distance. None of them have heard of Shakeel Saifi.

Half an hour goes by before the candidate finally arrives in a black SUV with character actor Arun Bakshi. I ask Saifi, who until recently was a Congress member, when his political career began. He starts talking about 1982, when as a nine-year-old he accompanied his “Congressi” father to a State dinner with Indira Gandhi and Saddam Hussein. A couple of kids kept pointing to him and saying ‘ro’. He asked Indira why he was being asked to cry. She explained ‘ro’ in Arabic means go away. He told her he will beat them up. After this pointless tale, Saifi begins talking about his checkered history with the party. He claims he was disillusioned with it after the Muzaffarnagar riots. He recounts an “interesting” meeting with Rahul Gandhi “in Shangri-La” (the hotel, he means). “He was also getting his haircut and I was also getting my haircut. I personally stopped him and asked him about Muzaffarnagar, and he said I will tell you after I have visited, and then he visited but nothing came of it.” His disaffection with the Congress might have other reasons too. “They don’t give tickets to Muslims and they have been using us as a vote bank for 60 years,” he complains. Therefore he met “Behen Mayawati” who impressed him by saying there have been no riots in UP during her regime. She also offered him a ticket.

I find it hard to piece together what exactly Saifi does. People in the area offer salacious theories about his ‘business’ — none verifiable. He has connections in the film industry but he is not very forthcoming about how he made them. Bakshi, who is “like his father”, is sitting in on our interview. He has trained Saifi in public speaking. Ekta Kapoor, who he met “through a friend”, has “tied rakhi to him in the Ajmer Dargah”. His company Saifi Films does promotion, distribution and production, is all he tells me. The company’s website is defunct and the Facebook page mostly has pictures of Saifi with Sunny Leone. All I find on his personal website is newsreel from when he took Emraan Hashmi to promote Dirty Picture outside the Parliament — including, oddly, news reports criticising them for disrespecting the premises. Saifi says stars are calling him everyday — “Sridevi, John Abraham, Vidya Balan, will all come.” I ask him if stars can help get more votes. He says he is getting stars only to prove a point to Congress.

Saifi insists the current MP, Sandeep Dikshit, will lose. His only competition is BJP’s Maheish Girri. He doesn’t know Girri but has met him in Shangri-La too. Both Girri and he reach the SDM’s office at the same time to file their nominations. Many of Girri’s supporters, like him, are in saffron robes. Saifi’s people are wearing finely embroidered skullcaps. Girri’s supporters mob Bakshi, but claim Girri will win and take care of their needs “in this world and the next.” Girri, who ran an ashram in Gujarat, is now a disciple of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. “When he delivers sermons you can see god in his face,” say BJP workers.

Unperturbed, Saifi is off to campaign the next morning. He is in a Porsche Cayenne driven by Daler Mehndi, who “agreed to campaign for him despite being a Congress member,” Saifi says. They are headed for Jamia Nagar, where his family lives. He tells me he enjoys overwhelming support in the area and the “Muslim samaj” will only vote for him. He is quick to add that the Imam of Jama Masjid, Ahmed Bukhari, has also pledged support to the BSP. I ask him if AAP is a threat. “If AAP had fielded Shazia Ilmi or a Muslim candidate, I would have withdrawn my nomination. But they got an outsider (Rajmohan Gandhi) and sent bechaari Shazia to Ghaziabad,” he says dismissing their prospects. He was in Mecca last week to pray for his victory. Mehndi, he tells me, asked for votes for him and sang ‘Allah Allah Bismillah’ to a fawning crowd.

I meet Mehndi in the lobby of the Surya Hotel, where Saifi puts up all his star campaigners. I ask him what he makes of Saifi’s bid, and he says “I don’t understand politics. All I know is they are all the same. They keep making a fool of us, and our beloved Hindustan keeps getting fooled.”

Back in Jamia Nagar, 12-year-old tea seller Nadeem has heard of neither Mehndi nor Saifi. The local paan seller says he will be “surprised if Saifi’s own family votes for him”. “Gandhi ka beta hi jeetega,” he adds, despite the fact that Rajmohan is yet to start campaigning. The same sentiment is echoed when I speak to Muslims near Medina Masjid in Trilokpuri. Everyone laughs off Saifi and Girri’s prospects. They don’t seem to dislike Sandeep Dikshit but believe AAP can work miracles.

Back at Chand Cinema, when I had asked the ear cleaner who he’ll vote for he had said he doesn’t know — “Maybe I will only stand.” “For MP or MLA?” I ask him. “I don’t know the difference.” Most people blame Dikshit for tasks the MCD or their local MLA have failed to carry out. The old man with cataract-ridden eyes, 85-year-old Ram Dhir Pradhan, was a freedom fighter in Lahore and has been a Congress worker since. He says Dikshit won’t win but he’ll “never leave Congress, jeete ya haare.”

Pragya Tiwari edits thebigindianpicture.com

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