At four PM she was at a community centre in Ward 11 — her weakest ward, the one she had always known would go against her and which she had been working to limit the margin in. She was checking the accessibility accommodations for elderly voters — a systemic gap she had identified on Day Twelve and had raised with the election commission and which had been partially addressed and which she was checking the partial address of. A community centre supervisor found her doing this and looked surprised. "Malhotra's people were here at nine this morning checking the same thing," he said.
She looked at him. "And?" she said.
"And they arranged for a ramp to be installed." He pointed. There was indeed a ramp at the main entrance — new, clearly not part of the original setup. "The election commission had said they couldn't do it in time. They brought a contractor."
She looked at the ramp. She thought about a candidate who had hired a contractor to install a ramp at a polling booth in his weakest ward, in a ward that was going against him, so that elderly voters who couldn't manage the steps could access the ballot. She thought about what that said about the gap between the public face and the actual person, and about how thirty days of kitchen conversations had given her access to the actual person, and about how the actual person was — she held this very directly — someone she would have wanted to know regardless of the election and the court order and the specific impossible situation of the last thirty-one days.
She voted at five PM, at her own assigned booth in Ward 2. She stood in line with the other voters — she had wanted no special treatment, had asked her team to make no special arrangements — and when her turn came she took the ballot and she stood at the voting machine and she voted for herself and she thought: this is the correct order. The vote is the correct order. The thing that comes after is the thing that comes after.
