In Dependence

Celebrating 61 years of Freedom is a moment whose joy can be matched only by a mother who has given birth to a child. When the mother, our mother, India is celebrating the moment of birth as a free country with such intensity even after 61 years, it shows the strength of the dreams seen by those who dedicated their life for this cause bravely, whole-heartedly, and for a reason worthy of every drop of blood they had spilled. Every person who felt about this country’s freedom as the sole purpose of the eventful years (s)he spent on Earth, deserves a standing ovation and an applause loud enough to reflect the heart beat of every Indian brimming with pride for being one.

Coming to think of a new nation emerging into the world without the support of any super power should have been a surprise. Even as the determination of many freedom fighters resulted into the fruit we are having today, a great challenge of driving the country, a difficult responsibility, was faced with learned patience by leaders like ‘Mahatma’ MK Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, B R Ambedkar, S Radhakrishnan, and the like, post independence. I remember hating the repeated occurrence of lessons pertaining to the life and achievements of Dr.B R Ambedkar in my schooling days. But when I thought about the effort and dedication he put into the making of our Constitution, I wondered at his achievement of the mammoth task.

But all the things we came across till now limit the freedom to political and administrative nature only. Our dependence on others continues to exist in many cases. 61 years of freedom from colonial rule should stop being just a matter of celebration and signify the overall progress of the nation in general, and that of every citizen in particular. The fight for the uplifting of weaker sections should transform into a process of uplifting itself, than continuing to be just a fight. The Spark that occurs at the dawn of new realisations among the Indians in various fields should grow into a fire, bright enough to lead the world into unexplored domains of knowledge base, instead of being doused off in the Spark stage itself. By Independence, i mean to say that we should rise in the world-arena as a country uniform and complete in all respects, and thus reduce the dependence on other countries, which unfortunately cannot be avoided altogether.

Comparing our Motherland with other nations and pointing out at the deficiencies and the incompetence pains my heart too. What other scale can we choose to measure InDependence then? All I wanted to envision amidst the pomp of the Indian Independence Day is that a day should come when India is over the league of he developed world, and if possible, I want to be a part of that celebration and triumph by being one among the people responsible for such a feat. JAI HIND!

My Blogosphere‘s Freedom Festival posts were posted by Arvind, Reema, Manoj, Mahak, Lekhni, RJ and Suda also. The mention of these posts here serves as an example of different perspectives of patriotic fervor; an instance of  Unity in Diversity.

Criticism

Of all the freedom we humans have acquired by the virtue of our birth, i tend to think that the freedom to speak is being exploited the most. I used the word ‘exploited’ rather than ‘utilised’ for the reason that, we do not speak good always. How good and how much good we speak is, again a matter of perspective. But when it comes to unwanted talk, we find it a very easy task to find tens of people around us who are into it. I will not deny that I am not such a person, but my kind of unwanted talk is quite local and mainly consists of an ‘ummmm’ sound regarding the food that i eat (i find foods tasty enough to tease my senses most of the time), or because of a hot chick that just passed by (and i secretly wish that i was her t-shirt to hug her so tightly 😉 ).

But this is not going to affect anyone. The talk will subside as soon as the situation passes and the words will find a way to go out of your brain very easily. But imagine all this pastime talk becoming a business, and a profitable one at that! Thats what the media has turned out to be. Especially the critics they encourage. Over the recent times, there have born critics for almost all kinds of topics. Right from the politics in America talked about in India, to the delay in the flagging off of an Airport, to a wardrobe malfunction of a model at a ramp show, to the aeroplane costumes of bollywood stars (they were even rated out of 5 in different catagories viz. shades, dress, footwear etc.), to the auction of the cricketers (man! i thought they played cricket out of freewill until i realised that cricket too was like a Software engineer’s job 😉 ), to the recipes of sanjeev kapoor, to the politics on the small screen by Ekta kapoor, to whatever crap you thought was unworthy of a comment in the wildest of your dreams.

But can you imagine a present day scenario without all these comments? Many don’t know the answer because they can’t decide upon their fields of interest exactly. It seems like ‘been there, done that’ culture has ignited the dumbest of people’s urge to know more about much more varieties of things that happen in this world. You ask a school kid about the mobile phone he likes the most, and i am sure he cannot settle with one answer! Thats because, he knows about the mobiles in the market and the ones to hit the stands in near future, and he has a very difficult choice to make!

Such will be the case in many matters where the variety is more and the number of people commenting on them are growing with every passing day. The ability to make firm choices is fading among the people, and i’ll not be surprised to find a highly confused world by the time I will be a full fledged critic myself! 😉 (those will be the days when i’ll probably be pushed to a reclining chair with a newspaper to finish off before breakfast and the internet to keep me updated every second about some politician or a celebrity creating news about their lost innerwear! 😀 )