An election defeat brings a temporary loss of habitat, but life still beckons
On the campaign trail, optimism is every candidate's default mode. "You can't get through the ordeal of an election unless you convince yourself you're winning," says Aiyar frankly. "I never thought I would lose, "admits Mollah, "just that the margin would be lower." After defeat, the neta must swiftly find elegant ways to explain what he couldn't or wouldn't see, staring him in the face. "Dal mil gaye, dil nahi mile," says Paswan, suggesting the votes of his electoral ally, Rashtriya Janata Dal, were not transferred to him. Mollah, who lost in Uluberia, West Bengal, despite a good personal reputation, because of the CPI(M)'s monumental blunders, takes refuge in euphemisms: "There were communication gaps." But politicians can be endearingly honest in defeat. As a Muslim seeking votes with the bjp's lotus in his hand, Naqvi became, he more or less admits, a nowhere man in Rampur. Muslims rejected him because he was from Varun Gandhi's party, and rss workers defected to Jayaprada, the leading Hindu in the fray.
They are not, of course, above slipping in a barb or two. "Do log uthata hai, do baithata hai (two people help him to sit down and get up)," says Paswan with a pitying shrug, of Ram Sunder Das, the 88-year-old who defeated him, interrupting his dream run in Hajipur. "If I had got just 18,000 votes more, I too would have won a Chidambaram-like victory, and please quote my exact words," says Aiyar. "It was a C-grade filmi drama," says Naqvi, "scripted by Amar Singh".
But bitch though they might, political losers don't moan. Not even those who have usually 'won', like Paswan, with his knack of sinuously inserting himself into successive cabinets, whether UPA or NDA. In an office plastered with pictures of him in cricket whites, open-necked shirts, Muslim caps and checked scarves, the indefatigable networker, still busy trying to secure favours for seekers, says bracingly: "I don't want condolences. But 80 per cent of my workers come here crying, so finally I have to tell them, 'Rona band karo, ab kaam karo'."