Page 221 of The Circle of Exile
“And did you find what you were looking for?”
“Some of it.”
Atharva smiled — “Then let’s do it my way this time.”
Vikram’s face looked skeptical.
“Let me rephrase. I am here to sow seeds for Himachal 2019,” Atharva opened his cards. “You?”
“I want to see, hear, collect.”
“For whom?”
“Myself.”
“You want to stand from here?”
“No.”
“Then?”
Vikram’s breath was swelling with the incline. Atharva reached out and flattened it.
“I want to take down the current regime.”
A man after my own heart,Atharva surmised. That’s how new world orders were made. Not on do-good mantras, but on rage for the old word order. That’s how KDP had been motivated to conquer Jammu & Kashmir once.
“Let’s do it.”
The treadmill slowed to a crawl of cool-down period. Vikram’s body began to move at a leisurely pace, his hands coming to the handles as he walked the final few steps. The machine came to a stop and he hopped down.
“Atharva Singh Kaul,” he held his hand out. A sweaty but firm hand met his. “Vikramaditya Rana.”
Atharva pumped it — “Bench press.”
42. Winning an election and being a good leader are two very different things…
“Winning an election and being a good leader are two very different things. One requires the tact of a swindler, the other is the dream of idealists. You have to marry them both, bring the right amount of streaks. And there you have your sweet spot.”
Atharva wrote two words on a piece of tissue in two columns.
WINNING | LEADING
Their cups of coffee sat untouched as soft hail swirled around their table, even under the roof that the cafe owner had rolled out over their heads. He had seen them take the seats on his only outdoor table and quietly declared them lunatics before sending the waiter and out getting some semblance of cover for them. Atharva glanced at the inside of the cafe — cozy and warm, and full. All the cafes they had seen on their way were full of breakfast crowds. Shimla didn’t have an off-season it seemed.
“You mean to tell me that you won the election in J&K by tricking your way into the system?” Vikram sat forward.
“Not tricking. Being mindful,” Atharva picked up his cup and took a sip. Black, dark, hot — his struggling days. It brought a smile to his face.
“Why are you smiling?”
Atharva shook his head — “Here’s how you create a system,” he sketched out on the tissue paper, writing under the WINNING column.
“You start with individual booths. You need one Booth Head, two Pracharaks and one Panna Pramukh per hundred houses. The Pracharaks reach out to fifty houses each, drum up issues and get support for the party at a personal level. These people need to be very good at convincing. Bonus points if they are locally popular. They get ins into the houses easily. A Panna Pramukh is in charge of electoral rolls. He sits inside the booth and does dull, meticulous work that isinvaluable. He turns this vocal support into names, numbers, and turnout lists. Scale this, and you have an accurate model, not only for winning but also predicting…”
“One minute, sorry to interrupt. Aren’t we going to talk candidates?”
“No. You always start with the voter.”
