Any dream will do

When I was in school, Independence Day meant waking up early on a school holiday (blasphemy!), donning Saturday whites and going to school by 8.30 in the morning to witness the flag-hoisting ceremony (never did understand the fuss then) and being forced to sit through a really tedious lecture on the importance of our country's independence by some dignitary I really didn't know from Adam and didn't particularly care to. Before puberty struck, post-lecture session with my schoolmates putting on a grand show with hoops and flags and other paraphernalia was something I looked forward to. I became a snickering know-it-all once I hit puberty, though and I-day celebrations at school meant gawking at the boys in pants in high school and laughing at the antics of the younger children, a routine that they were forced to perform every year by our physical education teacher. But, one thing I waited for every year of my school education was the doodh-peda that we would get for putting up with the torture we were made to go through every single year on I-Day.

 

 

Ten years ago, during my last year in college, I remember we had gotten white T-shirts block-printed with some snide tongue-in-cheek remark about not knowing what independence meant, what with parents and lecturers breathing down our necks all the time. It was some harebrained idiot's idea that we all subserviently went along with, because:

• He was good-looking
• He was a smooth talker
• We didn't realise he was going to make money off it
• We didn't particularly care, for it was not our money we spent in buying the crummy T-shirt
• We just needed a reason to rebel in our last year

We were all supposed to collect together at our regular haunt, an Udupi eating joint near college, to show our solidarity to the cause of "Freedom! Now I'm gonna get me some happy sans parents and teachers when I finish this year, tra-la-la-la-la" bunkum. Of course, I didn't have the guts or the gumption to flaunt it, even though it was a holiday and no lecturer was likely to be around. Rather than be called a wimp, I didn't go. So much for being ballsy, sigh.

 

 

Three years ago, as a newbie to the world of blogging, I wrote (paraphrasing here) about showing secularism in more places than the office lunch-table. I wrote about not slinking away from bearded people because your community or your boss or your immediate circle demanded it of you.  I wrote about not having a jingoistic sense of patriotism, but how I was unable to swallow the lump in my throat every time I heard Ae mere watan ke logon or whooping every time Sachin knocked Pakistan's balls off, pun intended. Because of blogging, I made new friends, some of whom have stuck around. (Happy anniversary, Prats and Hyde). Today, I still remain an idealist but I've undergone some refinement over the last three years. For example, I vociferously admonish all those who jeer our cricket team, especially on days that Sachin isn't in form, whereas I would have joined them three years ago. I'm not known to make racist remarks, but someone passed a callous remark recently about the recent spate of terrorist attacks in the country and my reaction surprisingly was that we were in no way sullying the name of the Muslim community - some of their own were doing a mighty fine job themselves. But it doesn't alter the fact that they are no less human than you and I, however you look at it.

 

 

Today, being a holiday, I spent more time in the kitchen than usual, cleaning and wiping and chopping and cooking. Given the fact that I've crossed over into the conscientious phase of life, I take special care when I cook something like greens. A newspaper for the worm-eaten and DDT-dotted leaves and the ends of stalks, warm salt water in a big bowl for the parts I will ultimately use, a chopping board, another big sieve for the chopped greens so that I can wash it again in running water, (no overhead tank water, mind you, filtered water) and then, mop up the mess when I'm done. All this, while listening to Jahan satya, ahimsa aur dharam ka pag pag lagta dera, woh Bharat desh hain mera on the radio. And other patriotic specials. We have multiple FM channels to choose from now. Chances are you can listen to a favourite more than once in one day, if you get the hang of each RJ's affinities. Coming back to the greens, it's more than likely that the parts I throw away will be more in quantity as compared to the ones I use. To make the sabzi or the sambar more sizable, I add various other accoutrements like chickpeas, onions, peanuts, dal, ground coconut masala, etc. But something tells me that the frequency of palak dishes in my house is much lesser than a poor farmer going without food for days so that he can feed his family or committing suicide because he can't afford to do it anymore. 

 

 

Sitting down to lunch, I'm amazed at how our staple fare has so much of white, green and saffron in it - rice and curd, greens, green chilli pickle, 2-minute lemon pickle, coloured papads, carrot and cucumber slices, the kesar and pista in our kheer, and so on. Looking at the gulmohur tree outside my house that has seen better days, it strikes me that when they chose the colours of our flag, the tricolour as we call it, a lot of thought must have gone into it, apart from their symbolic representation. The soldiers of our country never did have the chance to listen to Jab anth samay aaya toh, but they gave up their lives so we could have a free land, a land to call our own, a land where even if you worked for an American company, you couldn't be made to work on the day our country gained independence. 

 

I'm not one to say grace before each meal, I usually say it right after with an appreciative sigh and noisy finger licking. But today, before I eat my first morsel of the day, I think for a moment of those who fought for our land and those who continue to fight for it; those who grow our food so that those at the borders have the strength to protect our land and so that we have to strength to crib about all the things that are lacking in our lives; those who give up their lives because that is what they do and those who give up their lives because our government is yet to decide if their lives are important at all; those who make sure we have a land to walk on and those who give us this day our daily bread. My country would not be my country without you. Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan.

 

Jai Hind. 

 

End note: This is dedicated to Austy and ?!, two of my favourite wordsmiths who inspire me to write better. I love you both.