Poll pourri: Indian election diary - April 23

Gulf News Foreign Editor Neena Gopal is in India to cover the state elections.

In this web-only diary, Neena breaks away from the politicians and the soundbites to take an alternative look at the polls, and to find out what's really happening on the ground.

If it hadn’t been for Jayalalitha’s Special Protection Group (SPG), I would have been trampled to death.

All the way down from the helipad, high among the tea-gardens in the hill city of Ootacamund – Ooty for short but it also has an Indian name now Udhyagamangalam – there were people gathering on both sides of the narrow street. But they were a largely urban bunch, who had come to see and not touch.

When we got to the central square, it was different.

There was complete mayhem. The people there, who could not have been residents of Ooty wanted to see AND touch. This slogan shouting, dhoti-clad brigade with the air of a rent-a-crowd relentlessly pushed their way through the cordon set up by the SPG while the local police decided they would pick on journalists like me.

A Manish something or the other grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me hard. I stood my ground saying I was scheduled to interview the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister straight after her speech, and searched in a suddenly cavernous hand bag for my elusive cellphone, desperately dialling the Superintendent of Police in the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s security detail.

This Manish said "Where’s your permit, if you don’t have one, you have no right to expect the privileges of those who do.”

The biting sarcasm apart, he tried to give me another shove into the crowd that had suddenly gone completely berserk at the sight of their beloved leader. Two women constables appeared from nowhere trying to shepherd me into that vast yawning maw of faces.

Thankfully, the Deputy SP finally came to my rescue.

He took me to the side of Jayalalitha’s van from where she was giving a speech, and then when the crowd had inched its way to that spot and pushed and shoved me and some others some more, he took me to the other side of her van.

Phew! My arm still hurts. But talk about a knight in shining khakhi!

More police stories

When we first arrived at the helipad, Ooty’s police signalled us to stop. So I let drop that we’ve been told to be here by the state’s top cop. All true of course. And it works like magic because to top that up I call him and the overloud conversation convinces the posse that we are bona fide members of the fourth estate, even if it is from another time and another place. I am getting really good at this, I tell myself as we are waved in through the gates.

The tea gardens stretch for miles in the distance. The four-hour drive from Coimbatore was through the spectacular Niligiris, and an incredibly beautiful bio-reserve. The flora and the fauna are fabulous.

There were monkeys, and splashes of cassia and flame of the forest, but mostly my favourite, the jacaranda tree in full bloom.

The town itself only has a hint of its British antecedents. The British appropriated it for their own when they ruled India because of its cool weather.

It’s less than 22 degrees Centigrade in the shade and there’s a definite nip in the air. But Chandran, the smart young officer in charge, says he’s hot. Err…

The real thing

While the elephantine Jayalalitha flew by helicopter from Gudalur to Ooty to Coonoor and back to Coimbatore, giving her fans only glimpses of her vast girth, we saw the real thing.

Driving through the dense forests that run on both sides of the Mettupalyam-Kotagiri road and a favourite playground of the slain brigand Veerappan, we saw the rotund behind of one very large elephant, the animal variety, peering from a clearing by the road.

To Gulf News photographer Kiran Prasad’s utter disappointment, the lady and her young ‘un ducked into the shrubbery, leaving only the swaying trees as evidence that she was there, and determined to continue with her binge.

We waited of course to see if she would emerge and cross back across the road the way she had come. But after many sibilant whispers and whistles, she came up, trumpeted angrily, made as if she would charge and then turned heel and backed into the dense greenery.

But then as if the gods were making recompense a peacock decided to show us he could dance, and a spotted deer crashed through the jungle and made my day.