Prashant

"You guys! Come on! He's here!" Grabbing my camera and stuffing my feat into my shoes, I dashed out of my hotel room. In the lobby I met Jess, Fiona, and Corrine. Some of the others had already gone, apparently, and I was pretty sure there was another group left behind us. We didn't bother to wait for anyone else, however, but just ran out of the hotel and fell into step with the rest of the people hurrying up towards Chowrasta. The excitement and adrenalin was contagious, and next thing we know we are sprinting--literally sprinting--up the road. Mob mentality prevailed. Follow the crowd, we thought whenever we reached a fork in the road, go where the people are going. This is the way it works in any city when such spontaneous spectacles arise, and at the moment it was clear that the collective Gorkha consciousness was exquisitely attuned to one particular event in Darjeeling. You see, Prashant had come to Thunder Town.

All around us along the way, Prashant stared and grinned creepily out at us from posters and banners plastered over the moss. The four of us managed to stick together, and in a few minutes found ourselves in the middle of the human mass crowding the square at Chowrasta. There was a stage at the top of the square, and all around we saw people hanging out of windows and sitting in trees. I looked around for the sign that Nhan and Springsong had been making, but I couldn't see them. The sign had said "America Votes for Prashant" in red, white, and blue letters. Above us small white rectangles fluttered in the breeze. At first glance I thought they were Tibetan prayer flags, but when I looked closer I saw they were of a more local sort of religion: flyers for Prashant. Now and then a spontaneous cheer would start up from somewhere in the crowd, and for a few seconds the whole mob would stand up on their tip toes and peer at the road by which we all somehow knew Prashant would arrive. Mostly though, we all just shuffled around, murmuring in anticipation. Waiting.

Not much happened when he actually came. The mob went wild. Officials on the stage presented him with flowers. Children in traditional garb danced in a circle with drums while Prashant shook a tambourine awkwardly. After a few minutes he sang a couple songs, his voice blaring out over a crackly sound system. Everyone cheered and shouted. He left. The crowd shuffled out.

Prashant is now in the top three, and I can feel the people daring to hope that he might win. This does not seem an extremely unreasonable assumption, since, as Springsong pointed out, blue marker in hand, he has never been in the "danger zone" of the two least popular contestants. I can only suspect that Indian Idol isn't nearly the sort of community obsession in the rest of India. Maybe the collective Gorkha identity will be enough to put their champion through into stardom, into popularity, into whatever.

The past few days the newspapers have been dominated by pictures of Prashant's visit. I can't help but want him to win, if only to see the spectacle in Kalimpong on his victory. I worry though. I worry that the Gorkhas' will ask too much of him if he wins, or that the vindication they will feel won't turn into expectations that he can't possibly meet. One way or another, having an Indian Idol from the hills region won't rectify the underlying political and cultural issues that make the Gorkhas feel so alienated and misunderstood by the rest of All India. In the end, he's just a singer, good but not great, nice but not especially charismatic. Up there on the stage he seemed a bit overwhelmed by all that has happened to him since getting on the show and making it this far, just a little bit shocked at the way he had been made into, well, an idol.


After all, idols are just statues, just images--no more powerful than the beliefs and hopes that people have for them. It's a sort of placebo religion that keeps people going and keeps them satisfied, but has no substance to support them when the giddiness fades. The problem is, this idol, for the moment, is making people feel happy and important, and I don't dare shatter this golden calf when I have no tablet stones to offer in its stead. I'm not even up the mountain. I'm not a prophet or a leader or a messiah. The Nepali diaspora and the Gorkha identity of alienation is a far larger issue that I can only begin to grasp. Mostly, I just catch glimpses of it, visible for a few minutes on the faces of a crowd sprinting towards Chowrasta, eager to see their hero.