My g-talk and Facebook is now full of people with status akin to ‘can’t wait for the long weekend’. There is euphoria all around. 15th of August is a Friday, which clubbed with the weekend makes a sumptuous treat for the sleep deprived, overworked tribe of people all around me!
Marketers are busy tying up the loose ends of the campaigns they would run in sync with the patriotic frenzy and there are free-bees floating all around the retail space. I wonder if people jump to grab those deals because they are commemorating their freedom from the British Raj or is it just because the deals are lucrative! I suspect the latter to be true but I am happy to see the tricolor adorning those advertisements nevertheless.
The entire rigmarole is leaving me confused. Professionals and businessmen who can extract some value out of an event like Independence Day are busy doing that. People who have no event centric activity to focus on are planning week-end get-aways or dreaming about three days of pure laze. Who the hell is euphoric about the fact that our ancestors liberated themselves and the coming generations from two-hundred years of oppression, bondage and an insensitive foreign rule? Who amongst us pauses to think the amount of obsession, guts, blood and passion it took to drive out an alien administration that was strong enough to flaunt the slogan ‘the sun never sets…’?
We complain that there is nothing to celebrate about because even after sixty plus years of independence X percentage of Indians are still below poverty line and Y percentage of children die out of malnutrition every year. We complain about everything right from pot-holes to the stinking drains that overflow, to power crisis to the state of education to corruption to everything that ought not to be the way it is.
If August the 15th is significant only because it offers one a long weekend, it is not one’s right to complain about the state of affairs anyway.
May be we need to be reminded the age old quote, done to death in elocution competitions when we were kids and were probably more sensible- think not what the nation has done for you, think what you have done for the nation.
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3 comments:
Well dear its not about what Nation has done for us, Nation as such is a part of us and we a part of it, said that, yes we do have a right to complain and crib because the institutionalized government and its infrastructure, social security - all has failed. Not once but on every count. Why do I have a right to complain, because I and You pay a hell lot of money as taxes on our income and also for whatever we buy and we even pay an education cess even for secondary education now - but still a majority of children do not have access to education. Yes the Nation is accountable and I will crib and complain and shout!!! India as we see it is not only Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkat, bangalore or Hyderabad, India is also Dhaulpur, Maniya, Gorakhpur, Saharsa, Samastipur and even beyond that!!!!!!
Well my plan is to laze for 3 days anyways and I will keep on complaining until the time we have a solution and My dear Solution lies in a world order based on COMMU****!!! What say u???????
Yeah I hear you, gets back to Communism all the time. Look at Bengal, the epicenter of Communism in India and tell me if that has worked!
Yes, you do have a right to complain, but complain to whom? To the same people the like of me and you choose every election to device policies and hoard tax-payer's monies. Better than complain do something about it. If Communism is the answer join a communist party and teach them how to develop the nation through communism because so far they have not been able to do it.
I might sound a little daft (and maybe this could be my dumb blonde moment!) but I think celebration is about being happy.
I mean yes, I love the warriors of the past and the great leaders who led us to the path upon which we tread today. I appreciate and love history. But I really dont see why I need to seek its relevance on one day, only to forget about it the rest of the year.
If I am happy, on that one day, doing what I love doing the most, if I am free from confines of any sort.. work, everyday life, bull shit! Then I have celebrated the true essence of independence, haven't I?
So yes, round the year I shall seek reference from History and do my little bit to not turn the nation into a slob state, but on Independence day.. I just want to be happy and proud to be an Indian..
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