Is there too much to think about? You’re in a world where men with limp wrists decide what clothes you must wear, and of course everyone wears designer wear. You’re in touch with more than 200 friends through a social networking website, and you’re up all night discussing ‘issues’ without meeting anyone for days. You’re wondering which nightclub your friends are headed, while you’re secretly hoping to work out your plan to Manali for this long weekend – but will your parents be convinced? You want to lose weight – to look great you know – while you drink only Diet Coke, but will it work?
But wait, step aside, take a deep breath, and pinpoint a single articulate sentence that correlates your life with the fact that this year – on 15th August, 2007 (to be precise) – the day your country celebrates 60 years of being an independent country – is relevant to your life?
And independence from what: Oh yes, you’ve heard your grandparents talk about the struggle, a Partition, a few riots perhaps; a foggy memory of school with handful of teachers, field day trips at monuments, history text books – and of course the news channels now on how things have changed. But how does that really matter, weren’t they ought to change just like the rest of things in the latter half of the avuncular 20th century?
They’re moments of patriotism that we all have, but only when the thin mist of misconceptions clears. But is patriotism – the love for your country, that is – symbolised on Independence Day?
It doesn’t necessarily happen with me. But it can happen on another day when the Indian team comes home after winning the cricket World Cup, but certainly not with street kids selling you plastic national flag on traffic lights.
History says that it wasn’t easy to be an independent nation. To collect the remnants of a country that had fragmented psychologically as well as physically – the British Raj did leave something for us to handle independently. I admire that we did some fine work then.
And even though in theory we have retained the integrity of the definition of democracy, when we’ve thought of our country, but in actual, why does it seem so unclear and distant to me?
I've noticed that Bollywood's too trying to grasp the youth with our political past, and while Rang de Basanti explored the question of youth and the disconnect, it failed miserably in a solution with an over dramatised end. And while Lage Raho Munnabhai did undeniable wonders on making us see Gandhi’s relevance more than the reason why he is on our rupee note. But that too is now settling again in our forgotten memory. How does it all fit in?
But wait, step aside, take a deep breath, and pinpoint a single articulate sentence that correlates your life with the fact that this year – on 15th August, 2007 (to be precise) – the day your country celebrates 60 years of being an independent country – is relevant to your life?
And independence from what: Oh yes, you’ve heard your grandparents talk about the struggle, a Partition, a few riots perhaps; a foggy memory of school with handful of teachers, field day trips at monuments, history text books – and of course the news channels now on how things have changed. But how does that really matter, weren’t they ought to change just like the rest of things in the latter half of the avuncular 20th century?
They’re moments of patriotism that we all have, but only when the thin mist of misconceptions clears. But is patriotism – the love for your country, that is – symbolised on Independence Day?
It doesn’t necessarily happen with me. But it can happen on another day when the Indian team comes home after winning the cricket World Cup, but certainly not with street kids selling you plastic national flag on traffic lights.
History says that it wasn’t easy to be an independent nation. To collect the remnants of a country that had fragmented psychologically as well as physically – the British Raj did leave something for us to handle independently. I admire that we did some fine work then.
And even though in theory we have retained the integrity of the definition of democracy, when we’ve thought of our country, but in actual, why does it seem so unclear and distant to me?
I've noticed that Bollywood's too trying to grasp the youth with our political past, and while Rang de Basanti explored the question of youth and the disconnect, it failed miserably in a solution with an over dramatised end. And while Lage Raho Munnabhai did undeniable wonders on making us see Gandhi’s relevance more than the reason why he is on our rupee note. But that too is now settling again in our forgotten memory. How does it all fit in?
posted by jairaj at Tuesday, August 14, 2007
11 comments
