Christmas seemed to have come to Delhi exactly three weeks ahead of schedule. Or so it seemed as the city-state’s jig with democracy continued till late in the evening of December 4 – well past 5 pm, the official time to wind up polling; on to 7.30 pm, the election commission’s (EC’s) deadline thereafter, and even past 9.30 pm, the ‘final’ cut-off time.

Something unprecedented, something completely out of the ordinary, was happening, as every Delhiite who has ever seen an election in the national capital, would have agreed on the day went out to vote for its next assembly. It’s not about the time, though voting till past 9.30 pm does not take place that often; and it wasn’t about the percentage – the highest ever at upwards of 66 percent (at the time of writing), according to the EC. (This broke the record of 1993 – when the capital got its first assembly elections – when the count was 61 percent.) It was about the electric enthusiasm, the debates, the arguments, the fights, the daring and the bantering, mostly lighthearted but serious at times – both online and on the streets, offices and public transport.

Never had Delhi seen such a passionate celebration of democracy, and from all accounts it appears to be the result of the K factor: Kejriwal. For a man who formed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – a somewhat amusing name that drew out much humour, mirth and even banality, the most famous being Robert Vadra’s take on it: mango people – in the winter of last year and was registered by the EC as a political party only in March this year, it has been quite a journey.

For a former bureaucrat with a solemn, even somewhat dour, as some would say, face, with near-zilch charisma in the typical sense of the word, and with zero celeb value and loads of baggage in the form of the mostly bitter and in parts bland parting with mentor and Anna Hazare, who could have given any rock star worth her/his salt a run for their money at this time two years ago, it was never going to be an easy battle.

Written off more than written about till recently, Kejriwal stuck to a single theme for most of the pre-election run: his campaign against corruption and attempt to get out the numbers. Both, incidentally, laughed off by the big two in the election circuit – the Congress and the BJP – and written off by the media. On December 4, the D-day, both came back to haunt the big two: the campaign against corruption in the Sheila Dikshit government seemed to have cost the BJP a sizeable chunk of the anti-incumbency vote that would otherwise have gone to the saffron fold, and the sheer numbers with which Delhi came out to vote seemingly have cost both parties hard.

He spoke of water, power and roads, and prepared a manifesto for each of Delhi’s 70 constituencies. And what every astute politician should do but never manage to, he steered clear of the unwarranted: no playing to the gallery, no rushing to the TV studios, and no urgency to comment or clarify even amid the setbacks – the criticism over alleged illegal foreign funding, the hobnobbing with a Muslim cleric and even the sting on two key AAP leaders that threatened to dent the party’s strident anti-corruption voice.

In contrast, Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, seemed stuck to a prepared note: attack the Gandhis, and thereby the Sheila Dikshit administration, and focus on the centre to get back at the state.

It may well have worked, but it did not make Delhi stand up and wonder.

On the election day, a simple commotion outside a polling booth in New Delhi constituency – where chief minister Dikshit was pitted against Kejriwal and the BJP’s former state chief Vijender Gupta – told the tale of Kejriwal’s metamorphosis into the talismanic David to Dikshit’s Goliath. It was the fight over the ubiquitous Gandhi cap, made famous by Anna Hazare and his anti-corruption movement of 2011 and subsequently turned, unwittingly, into a sort of fashion statement by Kejriwal and his AAP. Suddenly, it seemed, the Delhi Congress had run out of icons despite being stuffed and studded with a galaxy of them. Its supporters, thus, looked for one in the Gandhi cap, a regular in the wardrobe of Congress leaders as recent as Rajiv Gandhi.
Only, Kejriwal’s AAP, thanks largely to the sheer number of legs on the streets and heads donning those caps, seems to have the trademark as good as turned into a copyright.

So whatever the exit polls say, and whatever the results show, come December 8, what no one can away from Delhi’s renewed tryst with destiny is the man from nearby Kaushambi, in NCR but territorially Uttar Pradesh. He may lose, he may win, but those would be sheer statistics. (None of the various and varied exit polls don’t see him as the next CM.) What Kejriwal’s supporters can hold up and claim to their contribution is the zeal, the passion, the heart to go out, shout, walk, run and claim what is their right among the average Delhiite. That is something he/she had forgotten in the huffing and puffing on the political spectrum over the last few years.