Skip to main content

Happy Independence Day

If there is one starving person in your country, your country is not independent. That old man called Gandhi said it.  May he rest in peace. 

I live in a country of beggars.  The helpless beg, the slightly less helpless steal, and a few are billionaires.  Quite many others are our leaders in the Assembly Houses and the Parliament Houses.  And a few others are religious beggars, a very fascinating lot they are: they provide us with our daily sustenance of fun.

Five individuals in my country possess assets worth Rs 5,23,897 crore rupees.  Mukesh Ambani's wealth amounts to Rs 1,49,474 crore rupees.  But he will sell our petroleum abroad and not give it to us.  That's called "the Gujarat model of development".  For more about India's wealth and beggary, read the report by Wealth-X.

"Don't be a spoilsport," says M.  "Let us celebrate our Independence."

OK.  I don't want to burst the balloons on Rajpath.  Quite a few crore rupees of the taxpayers in India have been spent on those balloons, I know.  Let the black ghosts in Swiss Banks rest in peace too.  If we can bury the father of the nation in peace, we can also bury the black money in peace.  Or vice versa.  And we, the ordinary people, should learn to bargain on Jan Path.

Happy Independence Day.

Let the emperor have his way.  Let him call the Tribal Chiefs for his coronation and have parties.  And then let him go to the borders and hurl challenges.  

We have an emperor.  That is more important.  Not a dumb Prime Minister. We have an emperor who can hurl challenges to the neighbouring enemy.  We have nuclear bombs too to show off.  We are in a position to hunt heads. 

Jai Ho!  Let us be happy.  

Happy Independence Day.  

Comments

  1. Happy Independence Day to you too

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wish being independent was the same as staying independent. :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dr Chinmoy, did we ever become independent? When the British left, we started killing ourselves in the name of religion. Colonial slavery gave way to religious slavery. Then we learnt to live with it. Now, with the new govt at the centre, I think we will see a reenactment of the drama that Khushwant Singh depicted in 'A Train to Pakistan'.

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. Thanks, Aparna. Wish you too a wonderful Independence Day.

      Delete
  4. If we test countries' independence on Late Mohandas K Gandhi's criteria then no country would be declared as independent. It suddenly reminds me of that dialogue of the movie, Yeswant, where Nana says "Sau me se assi beiman fir bhi mera desh mahan." Anyway, Happy Independence Day!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice observation Ravish. Now the ratio will be different; assi must be nabe. Even the economic ratio changed proportionately, you know. It used to be 80:20, meaning 20% f the population owned 80% of wealth; now it is 90:20, soon it will be 99:1 !

      Happy Independence Day.

      Delete
  5. Replies
    1. Couldn't help it, Brendan. Sorry for bringing such thoughts that don't match the occasion. That's why I'm a called a moron by some people. :)

      Delete
  6. Happy independence day sir :)... do you think India would have been more prosperous had it been still under the ruling of British ??? May be a completely different question but I wonder if independence has really made us independent!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shruti,

      No. The British were in India not for making India prosperous, but for making the Great Britain greater.

      But their departure, unfortunately, didn't give us "independence". We have become more slavish now.

      Delete
  7. Truly said if the last person of the society won't get the feeling of Happy Independence Day, it won't be a happy Independence Day, just now published a blog on the same. Hope you will like it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alok, I completed reading a novel yesterday and have reviewed it today in my latest blog. It speaks about the human urge to create a better world. My endeavour, limited as it is, is the same: strive for a better world. Empower people to hope and dream as also to materialise the dream. Thanks for sharing your post with us.

      Delete
  8. oh! Few words and many meanings. :)
    Greetings!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm surprised at some comments wishing gladly when the entire post is a satirical scathing attack on the state of affairs. Is it just my lack of clarity or did some not get the moot point of the post?
    Sorry if this offends someone...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...

Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali.  In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood.  Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there.  It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live.  When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me.  I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar.  I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city.  There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke....