Game Of Thrones...in East & West...

"If you stay here longer, you are going to get hurt kid. I am advising you to get out of here before there is a fight," my father's friend who was working for Janatal Dal (S) walked up to my table and advised me. Janata Dal (S) is a political party in India. It was the national election day in 1996 and I was sitting at the polling booth at the BJP (another political party in India) table. The BJP poll booth team had just helped a team of professional fraud voters who go around the city to different polling booths and the Janata Dal (S) team had seen it. Such teams exist for all political parties but BJP fraud voter team was less experienced in corrupt practises then. Now the Janata Dal (S) thugs had surrounded our BJP table and had started a verbal fight. One of the senior people in BJP team had disappeared from the scene, as he was trying to call the thugs from BJP to come help. The unprofessional BJP thugs did not show up till about an hour later. By then the senior party members had talked it out.

Later that year, BJP came out as the single largest party in the national elections and Vajpayee became the Prime Minister for 13 days (whole another story) but I was disillusioned with politics. Coming in as an idealistic teenager I had seen politics at a close angle as a party worker. I decided to stay away from active politics after that and just be an inquisitive observer.

US politics seemed far simpler. You mostly knew what Republicans and Democrats stood for. But the 2016 elections threw a curveball even for the most experienced pollsters. Strangers in Their Own Land is a 70% honest effort by Arlie Russell Hochschild to understand the Tea Party members in Louisiana, one of its staunch supporters. She talks about the life and challenges of the people in lucid details, almost taking you into the living rooms and polluted backyards of her Cajun friends. You can feel her liberal bias in some places but mostly she sticks to getting answers for analytical questions. Whether you agree with the political views expressed or not, you will walk away with a better understanding of the issues and dilemmas of the Louisiana Tea Partiers. Loved the journey.