Not Running Away!

June 4, 2024

So, I decided not to run away from the counting. Even thinking of what I will witness today creates a cringey feeling in my gut and activates acid flow. Painful. But I am not a 'runner-awayer'. I might need some time to ‘crawl into a hole and lick my wounds’ when something shocking hits me, but then I am back to whatever. 

After staying up late to watch the exit polls on Saturday night I felt agitated and couldn’t sleep. The spouse on the other hand suddenly turned off his bedside lights and fell asleep. He says that’s his reaction to stress, whereas mine keeps me up. I wish I had his reaction!

Three hours of sleep, and two black teas later, I was on the bus to karate. I missed my normal bus but walked down the corner and found another. During class, I added bag work to the lesson so I’d have a chance to blow away some of the heavy energy, but it stuck to me all the way into Monday late afternoon. I wrote to my e-mail group, the one that talks about these things, and one friend sent me a hug. I felt connected to more people like me, and it helped. I trained a bit and my energy finally released and I could look at the numbness I had slipped into. 

It was the numbness that comes from the outside saying that your gut is wrong. Of course I could have seen the ground interviews during the election phases and taken in what I wanted. But I had felt something, seen something, heard something, that had told me that the magic was broken. Last night I heard two audio-visual journalists on U-tube talk about the exit polls. Some right-wing trollers were heckling them through comments, saying how wrong they had been, and they would have to accept that people wanted Modi. They replied they were not stupid; they had been ground reporting for decades and covered many elections and they could sense a wave when it was there or know when it wasn’t. They could read the mood and they could work through their confirmation bias. I am glad they stood up for what they had intuited during their travels. I am glad they stood up for their journalistic skills. 

I also saw an organization working in Karnataka—who had done their own polls—challenge the Karnataka poll numbers, giving detailed reasons for their challenge. I watched an ex-SC lawyer, ex-IPS officer, and ex-civil servant, talk about how the Election Commission was going out of its way to make the counting process opaque and impossible to challenge. I won’t go into details though I made notes about it in my journal (possible material for a story). 

I am going to trust my gut rather than what I see. I will believe that elections are being manipulated if I see numbers that astound. I have been manipulated in the past and I know deeply what it feels like and how it confuses one, how you believe the outside, and let go of your knowing and how it splits and fragments. I will question everything, including myself, but I will trust myself too. 

If you are reading this and are similarly shocked by the exit polls or even the consequent mirroring in results trust yourself. I will write a post-election results post, whatever they may bring, sometime later in the week.

And now I will began watching the election coverage. Nervous. So much at stake.