I'm a woman, can I be President?

MY WEEK

Monday

For a political correspondent, there can be no other party but the Congress that can really hone your skills at covering politics. Its composition is a reflection of India's polity, and its history older than the Indian republic. Yet there is one thing that prevents me from volunteering to cover it, the propensity of its leaders to hold meetings at midnight. When the world sleeps, Congress awakens to mystery and intrigue. Our Congress correspondent having recently left the organisation, all hands were needed on deck to track the story on the Presidential nominee and I found myself taking out my list of Congress numbers.

Tuesday

It was a day of meetings for Congress honchos, led by Pranab Mukherjee. Senior ministers like A K Antony and party leaders like Ahmad Patel huddled all over Lutyen's Delhi, at all hours of the day and night, meeting each other. The candidate was decidedly fixed as Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Why then, I wondered, did Congressmen need to meet each other so often "" did they need to convince themselves of their choice? Government officials in both the home and foreign ministries were, for once, chasing political correspondents to determine the chances of their respective bosses making it to Rashtrapati Bhawan. It is nice to be wanted, if only for information.

Wednesday

The reason for all the huddling became clear by the afternoon of June 13. Pranab Mukherjee was made to foreswear any claims on Rashtrapati Bhawan. That's right, the Congress was meeting not to generate consensus for Patil but to make sure nobody else got a go at India's Presidency. The statement was duly made, and so arrived a freshly updated biodata of Shivraj Patil. A gallows humour gripped reporters tracking the story in the middle of the worst heat wave the city has seen in years. Congress meetings got X-rated titles, like Midnight hot-I, and Midnight hot-II. Then came the cataclysmic meeting of the Left which rejected Patil and the rushing in of Karunanidhi from Chennai to broker a consensus.

Thursday

It was a day of "historic moments". The Left parties played a major role in getting a winning Presidential nominee. Rajnikant's Shivaji broke all advance booking records, for once pushing the always-there Amitabh Bachchan off TV channels. All parties finally managed to agree over one name, that too a woman candidate. Wonder of wonders, the announcement was made by 6.30 pm, unheard of in Congress circles and well within time for all editions and primetime newscasts. "Historic!" cried editors, having enough time for once to run analysis pieces. What was truly historic according to me was that so little was demanded from a Presidential candidate. Hey, nearly a quarter of the country's population is made of women over 35, belonging to a significant social group and having done some amount of social service. I want to be President too!

ALSO...

Friday was an anticlimax: it rained, I went back to my other beat""external affairs, where I was tracking meetings dealing with the other "historic" conundrum, the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. Most people quote the cliche that history repeats itself, but my fatigue with the surfeit of historic moments and having witnessed political tokenism at its worst forces me to quote Fidel Castro instead: History will absolve me.