Glorious India - My India (Mera Bharat Mahaan)

I have nothing against exposure of our Indian flag nor the commercialization of the Independence Day. I don’t find myself overtly patriotic and neither do I consider myself to be totally devoid of any feeling for the country I reside in. It is also the country that saw my birth and the birth and demise of my ancestors. To take pride in your country of birth or country of residence, you do have to feel connected to it. My connection is somewhat limited to the cribbing that I do at the diverse yet identical queues that I stand in, intersections that I cross, crossings that I crawl through in my car, and call centers that I call to register complaints for the electricity outages, for the faulty ceiling fan that produces more noise than relief, leaking bathroom fittings, dried taps, inflated credit card bills, train delays and rescheduling and a lot more. I cringe at the sight of beggars at the crossings and the streets. I revel at the thought of venturing out on foot during rains, fearing the muck to absorb me as I walk or rather wade through. I wait for that long beep of the last dying effort of my inverter as I continue punching keys on my imported laptop. I honestly dread the moments when I’d be forced to offer a bribe to the policeman at the crossing, as I almost deliberately jump the signal. I can grease palms with the excellence of a Gangul-ian cover drive. Easy does it.

I have recently got entrapped in a self realization mode. The remote seems to be working on dead or at best dying, flickering batteries. My life is just not switching to another channel. I see people working around me performing different roles and varied duties. Some are engineers, some laborers. Some are soft, others hard. Some are teaching, some mugging up. Some are cleaning while others messing around. What am I doing? Sitting and waiting for my moment to arrive. I believe that everyone is born for some single purpose in life. Some find it, others don’t. I deliberately stopped doing anything else but look for the answer for myself. I am yet to find it.

But this article was not supposed to be about me. It is supposed to be about the kite that I saw. Torn and in tatters. The only concern I felt for the shredded piece of paper was towards its uncanny resemblance to the national flag. Something stirred in me. Holding my German Shepard in one hand and balancing the milk packets in the same, I took out my latest mobile and snapped a couple of quick pics. My dog did not share my concern. He had come for his walk and was sure to get one. He pulled me over to the other side of the street. He relieved himself of the overnight burden and then settled down to be taken around at my will at last. I returned to the same site and painstakingly took down the shattered flier. Now with the remnants in hand I pondered on what to do with them. That’s when I realized. This was simply paper and sticks. I was the one who saw it as a torn replica of the national flag. It was not. It could not be. The lie was true in my eyes. I folded the pieces into a bundle and promptly deposited them into the nearby dustbin. Thereby having relieved myself of the pain and turmoil that I felt.

But still the high quality digital photographs that I’d taken with my Nokia didn’t let me rest easy. The moment I transferred the photographs onto my laptop via Bluetooth, I was shocked and again reminded of its uncanny resemblance to my national flag. Was it just a chanced situation or was it destined to happen? Maybe I should avail of my rights as a law abiding, honest, caring and aware citizen and exercise my RTI to question the President, the Prime Minister and the concerned senior authorities as to why had I been so unjustly exposed to this ever lasting mental trauma and anguish. My country lay shattered and torn as I simply looked on and clicked photographs and all around me the people were unaware of the significance of the moment. They just carried on with their duties and went on with their lives. Why should I be so troubled?