The Candidate

Act I – Scene I

Characters : Sonia Gandhi, Prakash Karat, A B Bardhan, Karunanidhi, Manmohan Singh

Location : Manmohan Singh’s residence

Agenda : To choose a presidential candidate

Sonia : This is the 60th year of our Republic. We need a woman candidate. The Congress has some persons in mind. Let us discuss them one by one.

Karat : Absolutely, we need a woman candidate. Who is your first choice?

Manmohan : Shivraj Patil will be an excellent choice. (within himself : boy, would I be happy to get rid of him from the cabinet!)

Bardhan : She is not a good candidate. We cannot support her. She used to side with the BJP when she was the speaker.

Karunanidhi : We agree with the Left. I suspect she is also close to some other woman that I very much dislike.

Sonia : Allright. How about Karan Singh ? She will be a good candidate.

Karat (jumping from chair ) : She will be a disaster (within himself : that screw up that snatched Nepal from our comrades cusp ? never). She is too right wing.

A B Bardhan ; Cool down comrade. How about Mrs. Arjun Singh ?

Manmohan : She is very old. She cannot bear the excruciating schedule of Presidency. She is barely managing the ministry of HRD.

Karat : Why don’t you spare Pranab da?

Sonia : We would like to. But she is very important for the government.

Karunanidhi: This is not getting anywhere. Can’t we find some other women ?

Manmohan : Why not? Here I have a 3rd tier list of women in case we cannot reach a consensus.

A B Bardhan : Please read a name randomly from the list. That way there is no bias in our selection.


Manmohan : Karunaji, please pick a number between 1 to 100.

Karunanidhi : 40

Manmohan : (within himself; Goodness gracious, can’t he think of any other number? ). OK. Lets do a 40 mod of the number of letters in your name, which is 11. Yes. Seven is the lucky number. And the name is Mrs…

Sonia : (stretching her neck and reading aloud the name from Manmohan's list) Pratibha Patil.

Karunanidhi : Excellent ! Excellent Choice! (within himself : but who is she?)

A B Bardhan : Yes I know her very well. When I was a student in Nagpur, I had a crush on her. She is a good woman candidate.

Sonia : Karunaji, Thanks for helping us pick a woman candidate in this historic election!