Chakravyuha celebrates 64th Independence Day...

Bright are the stars in the western sky,

Green is the shore beyond the stream,

Sun shines fairer on the unknown hill,

But on this land of mine do I smell sweet….

I peep out the window, to hear loud speakers blaring a pirated version of the legendary rendition of ‘Ae Mere Watan Ke Logo” and decide against enjoying the fair weather now fairly or rather unfairly diluted by the inherently melodious voice of the koel of India hindered by the inherently cheap circuitry of the amplifier.

The source of this aberration to the fine Independence day morning is the age-old police station where you can find the Tiranga lying somber atop a tall pole, not for the want of pride but for the want of breeze that hardly crosses the street now, cordoned off by tall rows of zig-zagged malls, standing as harbingers of a new age.

The hands of clock reverse themselves for profit of none. Neither highness of appellation nor purity of purpose may induce them to do so. But humans are gifted with this extraordinary gift of contemplation. I sit that this confluence of the old meeting the new and contemplate on the antiquity of this term “independence”.

Beyond the books of history, where the pages themselves get immune to its alliterating usage and so do the eyes of the readers, what does this independence really mean!!!..

To me and my one billion compatriots, songs will be sung school by school choirs and speeches will be rendered amidst thunderous applauses and yet at the end and everyone will be rendered artist thunderous applauses and yet at the end everyone will be kept wondering at the significance of celebrating this day…

Recently, I watched though not with any went interest the “tryst of destiny” speech by the first Prime Minister of the independent India. But now my heart goes out to the august man heaving a sigh of relief at that momentous moment, remembering, recounting the journey that made a mark on history. His melancholic tenor still rings in my ear as he first uttered in the refined Nehruvian English the first words of independence. He must have known and so must have those thousand who had paid a price for this noble cause, what it meant to be independent. Peace is best discussed only by war generals it is said and the same goes true here.

But does inheritance lessen the preciousness of a diamond. Have we failed to realize this bestowment or has it reduced to be yet another synonym of life.

In the 64 years of our independent existence, this land of myriad tongues and cultures has been through a high and lows. We have walked on the rump of achievement and so were heads hung in shame. The journey has been memorable and now come our time to make it all the more memorable.

A half hour detour from normal routine to watch a leading news channel, is enough to recount every single vice that is perpetuating mediocrity, anarchy, in this land deftly potratised by the shrill cacophony of glamorous reporter and their TRP hungry bosses.

Vices have ever been the part of every society, when the liberated west is not absolved of them. But the credibility lies in the will of her citizenry to overcome them. “I Have A Dream” is what every politician should remind himself of as they debate unabated over naxal attacks in some obscure village sitting the lavish comfort of their Luyten’s Delhi mansions
.

I do not intend to take a dig at the rich nor am I so thoroughly communist to attribute all our problems to the rich-poor divide. But those affluent enough to be independent on their own terms, most share the burden of realizing it for the the nation sake.

In the past day the media overdosed the nation with a histrionic cover-up of the Bhopal Gas Leak Tragedy.

In the backdrop of all shouting across the biggest mockery of judiciary, where the court is a display of overwhelming beneficence, granted inhuman compensation..

A trip to the labyrinthine avenues of South Delhi shows promising face of Incredible India. The glory of our past and blunders of our present are aptly buried here in the opulent marble and yellow-stone masonry of its buildings. When the same backpacker makes a detour to be a hamlet in Orissa, the sheer degree of poverty that earmarks the shabbily cobbled street, melts away the enchanting façade. The dichotomy exists everywhere from the Asia’s biggest slum coexisting with the poshest of localities in Bombay to the ugliest of hawkers earmarking the yellowing resplendence of Taj Mahal.

The lines at the start of this piece of literature intend to be an eulogy now were they the result of one day chauvinism. They versify only a simple sense of belonging, the one which a child shares with his mother. And no child hates the mother nor does he judge her on how beautiful she is. Imperfections have characterize every age and ours in no different .It is not our want to eradicate every vice but atleast abet change in the worls around us. Hence repay the debt of our birth by creating a better place for ourselves and our progeny. The makers of Slumdog Millionaire and our very own Shobaa Des masterful elegy Superstar India went out of the way to emphasize the plight of this nation. Let us sequel an ode to its bright future.

                                                               
                                                              JAI HIND