"Ram Preet," he said. "Hindu hai hum."
In a country where names are easy markers of identity, name enquiries are never seen as innocuous. In Bihar’s Kishanganj district, where Muslims form more than two-thirds the population, I had asked an old rickshaw wallah, with a long flowing beard, his name.
When he heard that I had travelled from Delhi, he began reeling off names of places he knew. Shakurpur, Tilak Nagar, Sadar Baazar. Neighbourhoods that he had lived in during the long years he spent in north India.
"What did you do there?"
"I worked in the fields of Sardars in Punjab. I rode a rickshaw in Ludhiana. On my last stint in Delhi, I was a chowkidar at a thakedaar's factory in Sadar Bazaar. The thakedaar lived in Kakrola near Uttam Nagar. I would go there by metro. I thought I would die soon. Let me indulge myself by riding the metro."
"Who are you voting for this time?"
“To be honest, I don't feel like voting this time.”
“Why?”
“I have turned old voting over the years but I have seen that the poor do not get anything. When elections come, the neta log give speeches promising to do this and that. When they win, they forget everything. Topi wala kha pi leta hai, gareeb ko dhakka de deta hai. Those wearing political hats make merry while the poor are pushed away. But since I need to keep my name on the voters’ list, I vote."
“Why is it important to keep your name on the voters list?”
“Desh ka dhakosala bana rahe. So that the farce of citizenship is maintained. If I don’t vote, they would say I am not a man of this country.”
He said he was two years short of 70. And he had voted with greater enthusiasm when he was young. “I used to vote for the Congress…After all, it was Gandhiji who had driven out the British.”
But he dumped the Congress some 10-20 years ago, he says. “What to do, if people change sides, then my vote alone cannot help the party win…Wherever the others give their votes, so do I…”
The last few times, Ram Preet said, he has been voting for Nitish Kumar’s party, the Janata Dal (United). He belongs to the Kushwaha community, a backward caste, a close ally of Nitish Kumar's Kurmi caste.
“Caste does not feed you. You have to work hard to eat. But if ten people are going that side, it does not make sense for me to go another side.”
I asked him if he had ever voted for the BJP.
“Once…when they had taken out the rath. I was in Delhi at that time. They said jiss Hindu ke sharir mein khoon nahi, wo Hindu bekaar hai. The Hindu without blood in his body is no Hindu at all."
The party’s slogan of Hindutva had appealed to him at that time. But he was disappointed to see that the party which claimed to speak for Hindus had started taking the votes of Muslims. In Kishanganj, the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shahnawaz Hussain won the 1999 Lok Sabha elections.
“But Nitishji is also taking Muslim votes?” I asked the rickshaw puller.
“But Nitish has never said he won’t. BJP said so…”
“Was it good to say so?”
“No, it wasn’t…”
“Then why did you vote for the party?”
“You need to change the government at times…”
That's precisely the sentiment that appears to be helping the BJP this time. And so I asked the rickshaw puller the inevitable question: “What do you think of Narendra Modi?”
“Whatever you say…”
“No, you say…”
“You have come from far. You know better.”
“You are much older than me. You have seen more of this world.”
“But the crow’s child is wiser than the crow.”
“No, no, you tell me…What do you think of Modi?”
“Which party are you talking about?"
“Narendra Modi…You haven’t heard his name?”
The old man's face fell. He was well travelled, street smart, he knew everything there was to know. Now, who was this man he hadn't heard about?
"Inka kaunsa chaap hai? What’s his election symbol?”
"Looks like you haven't heard his name...."
“He hasn’t come here. How would we?”
The media might be playing a greater role in this election than ever before, but there are still Indians who do not recognise a leader until they see him in person.
Click here to read all the stories Supriya Sharma has filed about her 2,500-km rail journey from Guwahati to Jammu to listen to India's conversations about the forthcoming elections -- and life.