Election day in the US. Bins and I are not US citizens so we have nowhere to go and nothing to do but to pester our friends to tell us what their voting experiences were like. Muriel is the first to call in. She sends me a text to say that she was at the polling station at 7 am. “It was calm,” she writes. “Everyone was friendly. No fuss. Just as always.” My sister calls from Hartford. All is well. From New York, from Vermont, from California. Friends post updates to Facebook, to say that they’ve done their duty. All is well.
Everything seems perfectly normal. But Bins, who goes out for a walk in the mornings, takes a long time returning. I’m already on my second cup of tea when he walks in. Normally, he enters the house with a loud crash, removes his walking shoes with a resounding double thump and sets all the pans in the kitchen rattling as he strides in. Today he sidles in without a sound, shutting the door softly.
I ask him what the matter is. “I am getting a strange feeling,” he says. For a moment I think he means his health. “No, no,” he says. “It’s just a feeling. Everything is too quiet. You know?” I tell him I have no idea what he’s talking about. “The people on the street,” he says. “They’re just going about their lives as if this is like any other day. Even though it’s not. It can’t be. A big, huge change is happening. The people are choosing a leader. It’s an important thing. In everyone’s life. And we must ...” He trails off, looking into the distance, as if he’s seeing visions. “I dunno,” he shrugs. “It’s too calm. Something is going wrong. And we are not paying attention.”
“Oh-ho!” I laugh at him. “Just turn on the radio, if you’re worried about what’s happening!” He twitches his shoulders and wanders off, not even looking at his tea. Initially, I pay no attention to his mood. Then little by little, it seeps into mine. The painting of foliage that I’m working on, which had started out in bright, vibrant colours, turns dark. Shadows collect in the corners. Thorns appear. By evening, though we’re supposed to go next door to watch the votes being counted on TV with Jiggs and DingDong, we decide to stay home and listen to the radio instead. For dinner, though we’ve got ice cream and an apple tart, we don’t feel like eating it.
By midnight the results show that all the bright optimism of our friends, of everyone we know, is going to be betrayed. It’s like a terrible, unprecedented eclipse is occurring in all our lives and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. By 1 am, we turn off the radio and decide to go out for a walk on the darkened streets. Rhode Island is a blue state, meaning, it voted Democrat. But the rest of the country has gone to the Republicans. It’s very quiet. The sky is clear. The air is cold. There’s a small bright half-moon overhead. “I don’t see any stars,” I say. Bins looks up. “Me neither,” he says.
Manjula Padmanabhanauthor and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column
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