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We’re the largest democracy in the world. Surely voting comes naturally to us.

It’s a different matter altogether that we don’t have 100 per cent turnout during elections, but there are millions who promptly jab away at their cell phones to participate in the countless SMS polls littered across our TV screens.

Vote for your favourite dancer on Nach Baliye! Vote out your least favourite loser on Bigg Boss!

Or simply participate in a news channel poll on whether Abhishek Bachchan should marry Aishwarya Rai!

And if all that doesn’t whet your appetite for polling, pick up the newspaper and get ready for some dotcom polls about who should clean dog poo on Marine Drive.

From the large percentage of participation, it’s fairly obvious that there is a section of the population that takes its democratic right to vote very seriously.

They truly believe they are making a difference to this world with their poll proficiency.

After all, that’s how the world was once upon a time …

By that I mean a time in 240 BC when ancient Rome introduced the world to gladiatorial games.

Those days, when a gladiator lost a fight in the arena, it was upto the audience to decide whether he should live or die – by simply pointing their thumb up or down.

Decades later the thumb was replaced by the middle finger. Jokes apart, while the coliseums have been replaced by shopping malls and gladiators replaced by singers, dancers, unemployed actors and Page 3 celebrities, the audience pretty much gets to use their thumb even in the 21st century!

But going back to ancient Rome, it’s a little disconcerting to recall that an Asian monk brought about a ban on gladiatorial games in 404 AD when he rushed into an arena to separate two gladiators and was stoned to death by the spectators!

A scary thought when you believe history will repeat itself if this polling population keeps growing and those who raise their voice against this habit of inconsequential SMS and dotcom polling might get voted out of this world!

The buzz is that the husband of astronaut Sunita Willliams is already a worried man.

Because, when his wife comes back to Earth from the International Space Station, there might be frantic SMS polling across the world over whether Sunita, who hasn’t aged a day since she left Earth, should divorce her aged husband and find herself a younger guy!