Independence Day

 If there is a fact most of the people are a testament to around me, is that I'm not a man who regularly assumes the best of situations and scenarios around me. Nor am I someone who fetishizes the worst of experiences of as a matter of catharsis for the processing of a series of emotions which otherwise could find their way only through a rather rampant series of dominating motions. I have come to realize that unlike a lot of pop art around us, life will not offer successful climactic artistic and powerful release from the bounding chains of a current reality. Life will not find its heroes emerging from sands as tall marble Grecian structure at least as their physical presence, but they will be as timeless and as important as structures to their patrons. They believe that the world they live in isn't right and by no order of faith they are ordained to a life that should deny themselves or anyone around them of the right to live a life safe and unencumbered by the chains of the modern day polarizing political scenario that demands exclusion from the people and the institutions entrusted with carrying out the will of the populace. 

This is the India most of us dream of. This is the India that those of us who regard as an example of a post colonial country reclaiming itself from becoming the poster child of some banana republic, aspire to see. It is the country those of us who work everyday to not want but end up building. 

Our shouts for a departure towards left wing politics are not for the seizure of the means of production as much as they are for the equitable distribution of the product of creation. Of the assurance and balance of opportunity to life and safety that should just naturally extend to everyone. We run around the circles established by an entrenched structure of administrative and bureaucratic qualifications to ensure that we do our bit to maintain all the requirements and demands of the modern day workplace and the demands of a competitive scenario in a world that has its borders shrinking but at the same time we aren't living in a world that assures a protectionist economy or one that even values its talent within enough to extend the balance of compensation for the sake of preventing a neo-colonial setup. The product of the modern day India is talent, meant to exponentially drive business everywhere. And as we're "progressing" with the current government and political situation, there is a steady dismantling of the structures that set to build up domestic strength. We are victims of our own history. Simply put, our political leaders express the same weakness that we do. We want to mean more, want to do more but are happy with the little piece of earth we get. 

Our leaders are full of hot empty gestures of reclaiming our own religion and our own supposed identity regardless of the fact that we're not a flashback cohort. We aren't going to be shocked in to some ancestral memory because that is not how the past works. You build up a civilization through years of belief and construction of pipeline of talent and dominance. It involves very simply planting trees that neither you nor your children will see to enjoy. It's very simply why our focus on issues at best have ever been tactical. We are awaiting the splinter(s) to divide a union that is awaiting the healing of an identity ignored for far too long. Of a belonging that wants to be named but is constantly lost in either ignorance or in false validation of jingoism, disregarding the real meaning behind the depth of the term. Being Indian. 

But as ever. This story comes with its own heroes. Not of the chest thumping shouters, but of the reactive, active expressioned individuals acknowledging that any definition of their identity is not going to be claimed by a community. It is not going to be declared as an allegiance to a political entity that was birthed from a misinterpreted concept. It is not going to belong to those who are trying to snatch the vision of a civilization from their true owners just because they are louder or seem to be everywhere. It is not going to belong to those who are unable to build it for its future and for the brilliance it can contribute to humanity. It belongs to those who get up everyday and without a question, unerringly look up and know that everyday is a new battle for them to forward the spirit of a country accepting and constructive, favourable to the people for their existence and not for the sheer positions of the powerful and the disenfranchised for their entrenchment. And it is to them that India truly belongs. They who understand where innovation and private enterprise lies within the sphere of human existence. Of what balance means and why correcting not just their countryfolks, but the world is essential. For all of them who stand up and defend that idea of a liberal, freedom loving country not just in India, but across the world; wish you a very happy Independence Day.