On Independence Day

We had a "Value Education" class during our school days up to the Eighth grade. We had to maintain a 100 pages notebook, all decorated and filled with preachy text. Come August, and "Independence Day" for a synecdoche on Patriotism, would be a usual topic to fill in with more preachy text and a couple of tricolour stamp-size flags and pictures showing a fluttering piece of cloth attached to a long wooden cane clutched in the hands of a Too-Cute-To-Be-True kid. And I wondered why they never thought that making cartoon characters like Mickey mouse clutch the tricolour in their hands, instead of pink-cheeked, frock or half-pant clad kiddos might actually help rise the sales of such stickers.

Independence Day, thus, for me, meant a combination of the above, a national holiday, singing and hearing loudspeakers and TV programmes playing patriotic songs throughout the day and watching the common tricolour pinned on most chests.

It was a day when everyone seemed to have oiled their patriotic lamps and fought the War of Independence along with Lal Bahadur Shastri and Lokmanya Tilak. It was a day when you could finally use that full-white ensemble and a saffron duppata and be appreciated for it. It was also a day I could show off my marching skills. And lastly, a day that reminded me of the current presence of the month of August, and the upcoming Raksha Bandhan.

Although I loved patriotic songs, especially the "Ae mere pyaare watan" single by Mannade, the National Anthem tune and the white ensembles; the parades and the march-pasts, the lamp burning below the India Gate, the national holiday and the chocolates distributed on account of it, I could hardly be considered "Patriotic".

For me, Indians usually got "Patriotism" confused with "Religious Fanaticism" and "Race". I preferred tagging myself as a "World Citizen".

But hey! Independence Day also meant something deeper to my Artistic, Philosophical and Poetic side. Though not patriotism, I considered Independence Day to be a celebration of one's own Independence. Independence on an individual scale. Independence, as what it actually meant to ME, and to YOU.

Independence, for me, meant Breaking free of all bonds, leaving one phase and entering the other phase of life; Being self-sufficient, content and the Master of your own decisions and dreams.

And I'm quite sure, India as a whole would also have thought of Independence as more or less, the same, on the eve of the midnight of 1947.

You see, I can also read History textbooks and remember important dates.

So here's wishing you, one and all, a Happy Independence Day. Just remember, If you were moved enough by this article, Independence on an individual basis is what actually the Independence of the entire nation thrives on.