Dear Chief Election Commissioner,

Congratulations on undoing 70 years worth of effort of trying to build a non-partisan, equitable, and legitimate constitutional institution. You have managed to lose hard-earned institutional credibility in such a short time that you should change your name to Akshay Kumar. You had one job: to make sure that our elections are fought in a free and fair manner. And you failed at that so spectacularly. People are going to use the Election Commission as a metaphor for failure: “wow, I totally election commission-ed my board exams” or “the Rajasthan Royals really election commission-ed that match.”

Do you have any idea about the damage you have caused to our democracy? You helped turn this overwhelming democratic exercise into a literal shit-show. You handed out more clean chits than a printer that’s run out of ink. Your actions were only more transparent than a reality show producer trying to rig the proceedings for their favoured candidate.

Due to your attack on democracy, the result of this election will always have an asterisk next to it. If the governing party wins, it will be because of you. If the Opposition wins, it will be despite you. Good going.

One thing that isn’t dicey is that history will never forget your subservience or your cowardice. I hope whatever you gain from this is worth being remembered as the villain who dealt a mortal blow to a pillar of Indian democracy.

Dear Yogendra Yadav,

What is wrong with you? Telling people to choose None of the Above (NOTA) while voting in the 2019 General Elections was one of the stupidest things that a member of erstwhile India Against Corruption (IAC) has done—and I once saw a bunch of your former colleagues get an Anna Hazare tattoo on their face.

What were you thinking, Yogendra? Desi Thanos and his minions are out here trying to exterminate democracy and you’re asking voters to hand them more infinity stones? “Just sit this one out, you guys! No need to bother making a choice. It’s not like the fate of the republic hangs in the balance or anything!” Have you lost your mind?!

Look, we get it. You hate Arvind Kejriwal. Well, who doesn’t? But the point is that you didn’t have to help destroy our democracy to get even with him. The fact of the matter is that it’s Arvind Kejriwal. He is an expert at tripping himself. He once participated in a race in which he had a 67 minute lead over the other participants and yet he still managed to lose. He couldn’t win a game of Scrabble if he was the only participant who had access to an unabridged dictionary.

If that wasn’t enough, you then boldly pronounced that you want to kill the Congress party the very week the country needs them to actually do something other than sitting around and ceding political ground.

Dude, you have the political instincts of a fish that doesn’t know it’s about to be eaten by a shark. That is why your NGO masquerading as a political party is just you and five “consultants” who couldn’t get a job with Prashant Kishor.

Dear People Who Didn’t Vote in This Election,

Well done! Did you enjoy your day off? Did you have a good time? Did you have fun?

Well, hopefully, you’ve saved all those memories so that when you’re serving in a labour camp for sharing a Facebook meme, you can remember the time you skipped voting to eat at your local mall’s shitty food court along with the rest of your dilettante friends.

Unless you were in a coma or otherwise indisposed, there is no reason for you to not vote. People getting married on the voting day managed to show up to the polls. Old people suffering from various ailments managed to show up at polling booths to vote. A 111-year-old man managed to cast his vote. Imagine the things that man has seen, the experiences he’s had. Yet, he still showed up. People of all shapes and sizes showed up. But you, my friend, were too smug. “I don’t care about politics,” you said. “All of these politicians are the same,” you cried out to anyone who would listen.

Well, you’re wrong. Not all politicians are the same. They are bad in different ways. Our country is a clusterfuck because of the smörgåsbord of incompetence that has run this country for decades. Look at our current choice. On one side we have a self-aggrandising conman with a messiah complex whose true calling is to be a social media influencer and on the other, we have a man-child who was dropped into a cauldron of jargon when he was an infant and who went to a yoga retreat four years ago and now thinks he’s a bodhisattva.

However, democracy isn’t about getting a perfect candidate to vote for. Democracy is about choosing a government that will do the least damage to the things you care about. That’s it. We can’t just blame the politicians for not doing anything when people like you don’t want to move a muscle. They want you to be apathetic to the process because that lets them get away with everything. So no matter what the choice is, there is always a lesser evil. This is not just something we’re saying because it sounds good. It’s a lesson we learned the hard way.

If you want a perfect candidate, work towards it. Learn about the problems we face and how to solve them. Get involved and convince other people to join you. Stand up for what’s right. Question your elected representatives! Most importantly, SHOW UP TO VOTE, YOU BUMBLING FOOLS.

Well, all that’s a moot point now. You missed your chance. There is nothing to be done. We’ll have you to thank for whatever dystopian nightmare the future has in store for us. Look forward to getting a lot of curses.

Dear NRIs Organising Dance Rallies for Modi in Foreign Cities,

Thank you! You were like a breath of fresh air in this General Election from the ninth circle of hell. No, not because we agree with your video. It’s because it was so unintentionally hilarious! It was one of the craziest things we’ve ever seen on the internet and that says something.

A piece of free advice: don’t call them “flash dance videos”. Flash dances are surprising and involve people who have rhythm. Your videos consisted of children forced by their parents to dress up in weird clothes and gently sway with the wind while really shitty political songs played in the background.  

Look, we get it. You like Modi. Of course, you do! He is the human version of the off-brand chocolate you buy from the 99-cent store and try to pass off as the real thing.

But, here’s the thing: you’re the biggest bunch of suckers out there. The only people dumber than you are those who buy fairness creams. All someone has to do to get you on their side is pay vague tributes to your patriotism, say a couple of nice things about your motherland and how Indian culture is #1, make you nostalgic for the time you spent in the desh, and you’ll start falling over each other to give that person your time, money and loyalty. Stop being so easy. Have some self-respect.

Who were those videos for, anyway? No one who actually lives in India is going to get swayed by them. And no one in the country of your residence gives a flying fudge about our elections. They were just your attempt at “doing something”, wasn’t it? Well, if child services don’t take away your children because you subjected them to this, you’ll be hated by your kids for having this embarrassing piece of footage of them out there on the internet, forever. Congratulations for that!

Dear Rajdeep Sardesai,

We thought it was really nice of you to find time during your national snacking tour to also cover elections! Even though you completely election commission-ed your attempt at aping Anthony Bourdain, we do appreciate it. Mostly because we were happy to see you spend a lot of India Today’s money on what was essentially a national eating tour under the guise of election reporting. We encourage anything that takes money away from Rahul Kanwal’s youth-serum budget.

Rumour has it that this is your last election as a field reporter. We’d ask you not to go but we’re not going to do that. If we miss your glib take on the news of the day, we’ll just go read any earnest centrists’ Twitter feed. One thing we will miss though is your constant lamentation of the evolution of television news from providing information to providing pure garbage. If only they’d given you a prime-time show for more than a decade or let you run your own news network, you could’ve changed things for the better!

We know this means you’re going to write more books. And we’re pretty suspicious that the next one is about 11 snacks from all over the country that represent your idea of India. All we ask is that this time, you wait till at least the second chapter before revealing how peeling a sweet potato reminds you of your circumcision.

Enjoy your time off, you human Saregama Carvaan.

Goodbye and goodnight.