Tuesday 4th November 2008

We are sitting in the dark tonight, reverently silent, eyes glued to laptops. We sit in the dark because no one can extricate themselves from their seats to switch the lights on. All that can be seen through the blackness are the glows of small apple logos and the flicker of the snowy TV reception in the corner. No one speaks. Everyone has iPod phones in, listening to CNN streamed off the internet.

Tonight represents the pinnacle of this month's anticipation. Five Americans live with me, the lone Brit - two from New York, one from San Francisco, another from St Louis and a last, unfortunately, from Wisconsin, America’s equivalent of Bognor. Since we’re all journalists, we’re all, according to most Republicans at least, Obamaphiles who have controlled this entire election campaign, steering it in the Democrats’ favour. They’re probably right. Therefore, for lack of dinnertime debate, we spend our evening swapping internet satire, from Sarah Palin being fooled by comedians to, well, Sarah Palin being fooled by comedians. There has also been a breakdancing Obama, a Halloween Palin, and a hamster-faced McCain. The latter didn’t even need any photoshopping.

In any case, election mania has by no means been confined to our household. India, like most other countries outside America, has become Obama-crazy. The newspapers have, for days, asked, not ‘what India can do for America’ but ‘what Obama can do for India.’ The election result a foregone conclusion, of course. But what seems more interesting is that where America demanded of India circa Dubya Bush, India is expecting some kind of recompense from the first Black President.

Like the rest of the world, Indians see Obama as a kindly face, and have done so colourblind. Obama is celebrated here, his profile on the masthead of the Times of India almost every day for the past two weeks. It would be interesting to take a poll of how many Indians realise that the votes have yet to be counted. A puja was said today, and an astrological prediction that the Democrats have a 75% chance of winning. “His reign is going to be a long and prosperous one,” according to the guru involved. There is both a South Indian Vedic Chart and a North Indian Vedic chart drawn up to calculate Obama’s fate with precision.

“Everyone seems to be supporting Barack Obama,” says the anchor on CNN India as I sit here typing. “I don’t understand.” What he doesn’t understand is not Obama’s popularity, but why anyone is even bothering to count the votes. India loves him, America loves him.

But India’s enthusiasm for America’s black hero is itself confusing. There are few black faces, even in Delhi. The small enclave of Africans who do live here are mostly male, without families, and known for gang activity and dealing drugs to the bad boys of the Delhi suburbs. Apart from the Democratic candidate, the only other black faces in the newspapers in the last few weeks have been the Somali pirates that are snatching Indian sailors from the seas. Africans in India don’t really exist, and when they do, they’re hardly celebrated as potential history-makers.

And Obama is unlikely to change that. He escapes the barbarism branding because being articulate, with an American accent, he becomes white, or at least of a completely different race to blacks living in Delhi. It’s not likely that a black man would ever run for government in India. The liberal press in other large democracies do some soul searching, asking themselves where their next great black leader might come from. in India, the idea is so unthinkable that it would never enter an editorial meeting. It’s laughable, even.

Yet it’s not as if India hasn’t voted a non-ethnically Indian candidate into power before. Four years ago, a woman born in Vincenza, Italy was triumphant at the polls. Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, better known as Sonia Gandhi, had a father who was a fascist officer and didn’t even visit India until shortly before she married Rajiv Gandhi at the age of 33. After winning the election, she renounced power in favour of Manmohan Singh. Had she taken it, she would have been India’s first Roman Catholic Prime Minister.

The Americans sitting around the room are receive messages from home from friends and boyfriends, mourning the length of lines at polling stations, competing with anecdotes about how long they spent in the queue, but excited about the likelihood of change. They sit on the edge of an historic decision. Four years ago, India already made one. Whether they’ll ever make another is yet to be known. In the meantime, the rest of Delhi is happy to live vicariously, cheerleading the Kenyan-American.