Yesterday, as my car passed a liquor shop near Fort in Bombay, a notice in bold letters caught my eye: ONLY THOSE ABOVE 25 MAY BUY LIQUOR.
I laughed. At eighteen, a youngster may help change the government. But for another seven years, apparently, he cannot be trusted to choose a bottle.
Then a wicked thought came to me. Somewhere in Delhi, perhaps, an emergency meeting was in progress.
“Sir,” said the bald deputy, entering without knocking, “there is more trouble over the SIR exercise. People are asking for the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation.”
The bearded leader put down his tea.
“Who is asking the questions?”
The deputy opened a folder. “Students. First-time voters. Young people. Gen Z.”
“Ah,” said the leader. “That explains it. They have not yet learnt that when a leader says something is good for them, they should thank him.”
The leader rose and walked to the window. Across the road, a young man was arguing with a traffic policeman about a broken signal. The leader drew the curtain.
“How old must one be to vote?” he asked.
“Eighteen, sir.”
“And in Mumbai, how old must one be to buy liquor?”
“Twenty-five sir!” said the deputy wondering what his chief was thinking.
The leader turned slowly. “So, the country already agrees that a young person may choose a government before he can choose a drink.”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Then perhaps we have been giving him the more dangerous choice too early. Raise the voting age to forty.”
The deputy made a calculation on his phone. “That may not get us enough votes, sir.”
“Sixty.”
Another calculation. “Still uncertain.”
“Seventy-five.”
The deputy’s eyes shone. “Brilliant, sir! Shall I call the Commission?”
“Wait. People over seventy-five can be surprisingly stubborn. My aunt is eighty-three and has been voting against me since I entered politics.”
“What age, then, sir?”
The leader thought for a moment. “There must be a way to identify citizens mature enough to understand us.”
The deputy smiled. “Perhaps anyone over eighty who has never questioned a government decision?”
“Excellent. What shall we call the new rule?”
“Special Intellectual Revision, sir. SIR again.”
The deputy reached for his phone. “I’ll tell the Commissioner we have a new plan.”
“Put it in simple language,” said the leader. “And also create an audio file. Many of them over eighty-five, have a problem with their eyesight!”
Back at the liquor shop, my car started moving away from the signal. The notice still hung above the door. I looked at it with fresh respect. Somewhere, I was sure, someone might be studying it as a blueprint for a new cut-off..!
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
Like most of your articles, the humour is beautifully articulated, yet beneath the laughter lies something deeply unsettling and important. The idea of raising the voting age exposes the real danger: they want puppets, not people.
What makes this piece powerful is that the absurdity feels uncomfortably close to reality. When citizens are discouraged from questioning, dissent is treated as inconvenience, and systems are designed to protect those already in power, democracy slowly becomes an illusion.
The final image of the liquor-shop notice is wonderfully ironic. What begins as a joke about age limits ends as a warning about freedom itself. Ultimately, democracy does not need obedient citizens; it needs thinking, questioning, participating citizens. And that is precisely what makes this piece linger long after the laughter fades.
Thank you Sarah. So well penned.