School Life Is Wonderful

Let’s have a small retrospective session. Ok I won’t stress your memory. Let’s talk about just a day back in time. So what did you really do on India’s 59th Independence Day? Sat at home all day enjoying your holiday? Ok… made it for the function for the flag hoisting? Is it enough? Neways, even if you did that, I am glad. But I can bet most of you just, looked up to the flag in great pride may be for a few moments and then you were back onto your couch watching some latest pirated cd/dvd movie and enjoying the holiday. Your feelings need to extend from those few moments you looked up to the flag to your entire day, from this one day in the year to the entire year, and yes certainly for your lifetime. And remember you are not the first one to do this… Martyrs have lived, died and relived in our hearts being as true Indians. Just an Indian citizenship doesn’t really make you an Indian dear!

Here it goes –
India the land of the martyrs who have embraced the gallows for their ideals, where every drop in the freedom fighter’s blood has fought not for itself but for the nation, has today become indigent instead of indigenous of ‘patriotism’. Yes I am talking of India where patriotism needs to be revived and redefined.

We all probably remember patriotism when there is an Indo-Pak cricket match and when terrorists bomb our trains. But we definitely forget it when we cast our vote in the elections, when a week long hungry beggar asks for a rupee, when we shamelessly throw garbage on the roads and yet so many times more… Patriotism is observed as nothing else than the ‘pain on the prick of a pin’. It is rather believed to be a formality, a formality of saluting the national flag and 52 seconds of freezed stature during the national anthem. May be even a freezed heart with no gratitude for the martyrs because of whom we are living off so well.

The serenity and peace of the country is often challenged more by internal perturbances than by external aggression. The...