A thousand victories

Zohran Mamdani became the hundred and eleventh mayor of the most enigmatic city of the modern times. Zohran Mamdani, a brown-skinned son of immigrants from Africa and Asia, won the election with a promise for affordable homes in a priced-out city. Zohran Mamdani, a muslim, trumped fear of socialism with songs, dance and re-discovery of an ancient source of human energy - hope.

I have had my juvenile share of euphoria that emanates from election campaigns - a wild performative act of making others believe in what you believe. For many years now I have kept myself in the margins of this game as it gets played every day. But time and again there is this one who sweeps you off your feet - one with disheveled hair and fingers pointed to billionaires saying the same things he had been saying for more than half a century out of a small town in Vermont or another with a smiling Hindi, laced with Maithili, out of the heartland of Begusarai, singing songs of Azadi in the capital of India. They make you scoot to the edge of your seat and wish for the whirlwind to take you in.

A had been following Zohran on Instagram for several months even before he started to get attention from the pundits. She loved his reels with the Bengali aunties and the Sardarjees, his campaign songs with Bollywood masala, which she re-watched and re-watched with our pre-teen son living his half-American life in Bangalore. Here was someone, who spoke of the language of politics that was not dissociated from life, rather was derived from the living. Here was also someone who came from a line of storytellers and thinkers and then chose his path to tell his story. The night before the primary, our boy was scared if Zohran would be able to make it to November. Yesterday, when Zohran became the mayor, he did not even flinch. Such is the audacity of hope, which grows faster than we can comprehend. A had told me once, Zohran is not a US born. What keeps him going knowing that he can never become the president? I have no answer, but when you are the firewood, it probably does not matter.

A friend, with whom I have not spoken for several years now, writes in his Facebook wall a long treatise of what this socialist win means to the aspirations of the toiling masses. A cousin from New York, having lived almost a year now in Trump's second term breathes in an evening of ecstatic relief. A writer we know posts memes like a teen. Another writer we have met announces the day before the election that her next twenty-four hours in social media will talk only about Zohran. Some victories just multiply and give us our reasons to be alive a little more than we thought was possible.