All for a party badge

It was the General Election of 1957. I was seven years old. In those days, elections were different from what they are today. Leaders held public meetings or jalsas at different places. They made it a point to distribute party pamphlets among the audience. As kids, we used to swarm over all public meetings just to collect as many pamphlets as we could, fiercely competing with one another. 

Advertisement

But more than the pamphlets, my eyes remained glued to the Congress party’s badge that adorned the shirts and jackets of big leaders and party workers. It was a round, metallic insignia with an enamelled picture of a pair of yoked bullocks pulling the plough. It depicted the culture of villages.

Once, I had gone to get my jutti mended from our cobbler, a kilometre away from my house. There I saw a tall man wearing the Congress badge. I could not resist and begged him to give me the badge. ‘The boy wants this party badge,’ he told the shoe-mender. Then, he derisively shoved me away, saying, ‘You are too small yet to wear badges. Grow up to earn it.’

He went away, leaving me heart-broken. But a couple of days later, an opportunity came my way. I was playing with my friends who were grazing cows in the village pasture. A wide path led to a thickly populated village. We saw a jeep coming, blaring slogans of Congress, Gandhi and Nehru. The jeep went towards that village.

I thought of a plan. As the jeep went past us, I blocked the path with boulders with the help of my friends and waited for the return of the jeep. The jeep returned after some time. My friends fled from the scene, but I kept standing. The jeep stopped. An elegant old man with a white moustache and thick, white hair alighted and removed the boulders with the help of another man.

After that, he came to me with a friendly smile that assured me that I was not going to be slapped. He asked, ‘Have you done that?’ But I was so possessed with the thought of the badge shining on his jacket that I did not care to reply. ‘I want that,’ I pointed towards the badge on his jacket. ‘Oh, this?’ he unpinned it and pinned it on my dirty pocket.

He patted my cheeks and said in a soft voice, ‘But do not do that again. You can get the badge without blocking the path.’

I ran to my home as fast as I could.

Later, when the same man held a jalsa in our village, I was told that he was Raja Joginder Sen of the erstwhile Mandi state. He won that election and became our MP, besides serving as an ambassador.