With Kolkata voting for the Lok Sabha elections 2024 on June 1, I remembered the time I “voted” in the French presidential election back in 2012.
It’s no lie when I say I slid the ballot paper with my own hands in the ballot box right in front of the polling officer! Let me tell you how it happened.
I was on a five-week backpacking trip around Europe and after spending a wonderful Queen’s Day in Amsterdam on April 30, I landed in the French capital in the beginning of May.
The capital was throbbing with election fever then. As a young journalist, I was very excited to experience this environment in a different country. I saw the French newspapers we had studied in journalism school — Le Monde, Le Figaro and the like — with pictures of the two candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, all over the front pages. There was a televised debate, and most newspapers carried a picture of the two animated leaders who looked like they were screaming at each other.
The first round of the elections — held about 10 days prior — had ended with the selection of these two leaders as second-round participants because neither received a majority of votes cast in the first round. The incumbent, Sarkozy, was seeking a second five-year term.
After spending some days in Paris, I went to stay at my friend Caroline’s home for a few days at Cany Barville, which is located in Northern Normandy. Caroline had invited me over to her parents’ place. When I went, both she and her two younger sisters — Éloïse and Sophie — were home. I loved the cosy house in the little village.
The sisters drove me around to several pretty seaside villages and towns by the English Channel (“Why is it the English Channel and not the French Channel,” Caroline asked). Among the places I visited were the popular tourist destinations called Étretat and Dieppe, apart from villages such as Veules-les-Roses and Saint-Valery-en-Caux.
Caroline’s mother, Dorothée, cooked the most amazing dishes for me every day. One evening we sat down to watch a couple of French movies, including a hilarious one called “RRRrrrr!!!”.
On May 6, when the second round of voting, called “run-off”, was held, Caroline took me along to the voting centre. I was surprised when they let me enter the hall in which the voting was taking place because that never happens in India!
I noticed that voters first collected the piece of paper which had the names of the two candidates, then went inside one of the booths to stamp on their preferred candidate’s name, after which they came out and dropped the ballot paper in a box in front of the polling officer. After Caroline had stamped her ballot paper, I was surprised when she called me from in front of the ballot box.
When I walked up to her, she handed me the light-blue folded ballot paper and said: “You can put it in the box while I take a picture!”
“What! Am I allowed to do that?”
Coming from India, I was shocked that the polling officer allowed this. But there she was sitting right there with an encouraging smile on her face.
I went ahead and slid the paper in the box, while my friend took the very special picture I’d treasure all my life. The polling officer’s face sadly came out blurred in the photograph.