India Is Great

Mera Bharat Mahan....
Celebrating 61 years of Independence.
(Back of a truck on the way to Shimla)

As Jug Suriya wrote in his recent Jugular Vein column

"India is vast space; space to accommodate the clamor of giant cities, teeming with the seething energy of millions and the silence of empty solitudes.

India is space; space to include the pilgrim and the politician, the poet and the revolutionary, the street urchin and the merchant prince, Ahimsa and nuclear might, 3,000 years and the 21st century.

India is the express highway thundering with traffic and the slip road beside it with the sign 'For camels, elephants and bullock carts'.
India is mega dams and factories, call centres and shopping malls, and the voices raised in protest against all these and more.

India is a colour TV, garlanded with marigolds and a picture of Lakshmi on top, playing MTV while grandmother counts the beads of her mala and grandchildren dream of US green cards.

India is the roar and tumult of democracy and the forgotten face of a forgotten neta on an election poster stuck on the crumbling mud wall of a village deserted by all but the ghost of hunger.

India is the faceless anonymity of cities where neighbors don't know the names of neighbours and it is the 'Ram, Ram' of timeless greeting exchanged by strangers who pass each other on a lonely path.

India is the smell of incense and ancient stone, of parched earth when the first drops of rain fall, of the dust and sweat of rattletrap buses, of the sweet, milky tea served in an earthen bowl by a 'chai , chaiwala !' on the whistle-stop railway stations of night.

India is the crowded bazaar where two dozen languages and half a dozen faiths negotiate the day-to-day transactions of buying and selling, and haggling and cheating, and quarreling, and, above all, always above all, living together.

India is much more than a million mutinies now; it is a billion-plus narratives of itself, waiting to be told. Not just once upon a time, but once upon a future"...


India is all that and more to learn and experience

Precious.....

It's no idle boast when I say that through the ages men & women both lusted for me
Some people would go to any lengths to possess me, some even died for me.
and some wept openly begging me to be theirs forever
Small wonder that whenever someone utters my name, fierce emotions are aroused
I still feel the power of my passing, because in me resides the fate of billions.

Oh! you think I am just bragging, but nay I do not boast, I merely state facts
no matter how distasteful it is to for you to hear.
The passions that I aroused are still topics of long discussions & one can still find
many a tome larded with scholarly erudition & some with idle political kant.

Like Helen of Troy epic wars have been fought over me,
And like The Great Caesar himself, I Came, I Saw & I Conquered

Not that I am a mighty Warlord or despotic King, Nor am I filled up with too much hubris.
I never desired for people to exalt me to such a godlike pedestal
It just came naturally to my legions of followers and lovers.
It just is.. and there is nothing that I can do about it.

Before you jump to any rash conclusions just bear with me while I tell you my tale,
I leave the decision to your own sense of fairness to judge my guilt or innocence
----------

Oh those were heady times
Well do I remember that hour of my coming

I was clad in spotless whites fashioned by mother Change herself,
As I entered the clock in the room struck the hours of midnight.
The hall went quiet as they saw my approach to the Dais,

A dapper white clad man with smart black shoes with a rose buttoned on his lapel approached the mike no doubt to address the gathering & say a few words in my welcome,

A deep hush fell on all who were present for it was an important day, for most of them who had gathered there from all corners filling that small but ornate hall,with a high ceiling and slowly circulating fans.

All eyes were riveted on him as I stood at his elbow and whispered into his ear.

He well knew the significance of my words and so did the others who were met there in that hall.
In loud assured tones, of fluent English with a slight trace of an Indian Accent, and a definite stamp of a British Public School Education the man started to speak

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes
when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure,
but very substantially.


At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world
sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history,
when we step out from the old to the new,
when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long
suppressed, finds utterance._{+}

Oh!!
I see that enlightenments dawns,
yes...yes...


I was that moment in time,

So tell me now that did you not feel the weight of my presence on your shoulder and didn't a thrill run down your spine as you read the words of that man who was Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru The First Prime Minister of The Republic of India spoke then

Photo Courtesy :Harappa


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