Tuesday morning, August 22, was not the right time to meet Jaick C Thomas at Puthuppally: the LDF candidate chose to move stealthily through the constituency.
Onmanorama was told he was in Kavumpadi, in Manarcadu panchayat. He had reportedly taken the road opposite the famous Manarcadu Devi Temple.
But neither the lottery vendor nor the bunk shop owner we met along the road had seen Jaick pass by. "I have been here for more than an hour. If Jaick had gone this way how could I have missed him," the lottery vendor said.
Even the comrades at the CPM booth committee office adjacent to the temple entrance had no idea that Jaick had just a few minutes ago taken the deviation to Kavumpadi just across the road from them.
Jaick and the haunting myth
The candidate was in one of the traditional Nair 'illams' inside Kavumpadi. By the time we reached the spot, Jaick was on his way to Maalam, in Manarcadu.
The place looked desolate. Houses were few and were set far away from the uneven mud road, and largely hidden by rubber trees. Jaick had visited one of these.
The sudden presence of a seemingly 65-year-old pedestrian in this terrifyingly lonely place induced a jolt. This man, too, had no idea that Jaick had been in the vicinity but seemed to divine the purpose of the candidate's visit.
"There are two big Nair houses here, very influential in the community. Jaick must have visited these houses to reassure them that Speaker Shamseer had meant no harm when he said Lord Ganesha was a myth," the man said and walked away.
We finally stumbled upon Jaick as the Innova carrying him reached the border of Maalam through a byroad. We waved him down and told him that we would like to shadow him the whole day. His forced half-smile said it would be a nuisance.
Still he agreed, when assured that he would not be followed into the houses that he would be visiting. He did visit a number of large houses during the day away from the media glare, most of which we were told belonged to influential Nair families.
Rural wisdom
In between, he made it a point to talk to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme workers, especially those who had completed 100 days of work.
At a private farm in Manarcadu, Jaick distributed 'laddoo' to 12 women who had completed 100 days of employment. He wanted them to know that the Pinarayi Vijayan government has announced an Onam bonus of Rs 1000 for them.
Jaick thought it was a first. The women surprised him, said they had been receiving the bonus for the last three years. They looked happy to see him, some even fed him half their laddoos. "We will give you our vote," one of them said and added: "But we need help with certain things."
When Jaick left, the women told Onmanorama that their village, Korattikkunnu, which is on a hill, did not have proper drinking water facility and tarred roads. "No ambulance will come up to our houses," a woman said.
Manarcadu, under which falls Korattikkunnu, was one of the six panchayats that the CPM had wrested from the Congress in the 2020 local body polls. Most of the interior roads in Manarcadu are still unpaved.
Start and end of a conversation
Jaick has a peculiar way of asking for votes. He is evidently uncomfortable showing excessive familiarity. So like a teenager introduced to cousins, he holds back a bit even if he sincerely wants to look friendly.
Whether it is with rural workers or garment factory workers or housewives he meets along the way, Jaick invariably begins with pretended humility. "Hope you know who I am," he says. But this seems to work. His listeners, especially women, are immediately disarmed.
And with all of them he ends with the same words, topped with an endearing smile. "This is my third time. Last time, all of you helped me a lot and the LDF got the maximum number of votes in Puthuppally. That could be why the party has fielded me once again. Not only should you vote but also tell others who would listen to you to vote for me."
Most resounding slogan
During none of these streetside or worksite interactions, Jaick was heard talking politics. This he reserved for the public speech he delivered at the women's gathering organised by the CPM-affiliated Indian Democratic Women's Association at Pampady.
Before a mike, Jaick is in his element. The vague bashfulness of meeting people is gone. His speech - precise, forceful and disciplined like a military parade - could sound arrogant but somehow never insincere.
In words that sounded both proud and humble, he said that even the little development that Puthupally had seen - in the form of hospitals and schools - were the work of CPM ministers and "not the result of the 53 years of Congress dominance". By not crediting individuals and instead extolling the politics they represented, he made self-praise palatable.
Never once did he use Oommen Chandy's name. But lack of development under Chandy was his loudest election slogan.
He also used the moment, and his commendable command over Malayalam, to blow his own trumpet without making it seem so - his and DYFI's work during COVID, his and DYFI's feat of donating Rs 11 crore to the Chief Minister's relief Fund by gathering scrap, and how his elder brother donated blood to those in need.
Way of the cross
Though he began the morning in stealth, by noon a red open jeep carrying him and three CPM women leaders - Subhashini Ali, K K Shylaja and P K Sreemathy - brought traffic to a standstill in Pampady. Pampady was yet another Puthuppally panchayat the CPM had snatched from the Congress in 2020.
Behind the vehicle were hundreds of women who had arrived to take part in the women's gathering, most of them holding a stick-mounted blown-up photograph of Jaick.
Seen from behind, Jaick's photographs that the women were holding high told another story. From there, the handles looked like a Holy Cross. On a day when leaders like Subhashini Ali were speaking of the destruction of churches in Congress-ruled states like Chhattisgarh, the Cross-like handles seemed like voter bait in a constituency dominated by Christians.
