Childhood is that wonderful time of life, when all you need to do, to lose weight, is take a bath. Our minds and hearts are filled with nostalgia when we remember our carefree childhood days. Playing around like nomads, roaming like a group of orphans from one playground to the other, trying out new unimaginable ideas and morally banned substances, imbibing and uttering, memorized, newly learnt abuses at each other without any prior knowledge or understanding of them and a horde of diverse, comical actions to accompany all of these. Amidst all this frolic and madness, the mere thought of returning to our homes would clog our hearts with unbearable pain of having to deal with the mental strain of mugging up the significant lessons published, mercilessly in the pile of drowsy books, causing us to become sleepy-headed immediately.
My days, of being a child were no different. A small incident which occurred when I was a ten year old boy enabled me to take an unprecedented turn in my life. Now, after analyzing myself all these years, I can firmly say that it was ‘The Turning Point’ which propelled me to drift away with the pensive current into ‘No Child’s Land’. I still get goose bumps when I vividly remember that day… I left my house early morning, as usual, to board my school bus which had it’s nominated stop at a distance of approximately one and a half kilometers from my house. The coldness of the morning air made my legs, exposed downwards from the knee, jitter, as I walked lethargically towards the bus stand. Midway through my early morning trudge, overlooking my shoulder I saw an unsusceptible man jutting his head out of the window from an advancing bus, moving speedily in my direction. Concerned, I hastily stepped aside on the pavement leaving the entire roadway vacant to allow the accelerating vehicle pass soundly from a considerable distance. The bus whizzed past me making my hair flutter as I shuddered violently to confront the spine-chilling blast of air generated and displaced by it’s speedy movement.
“See and walk you idiot!!!” the man whose head was protruding from the window shouted at me as the vehicle sped away disappearing into the early morning dense fog.
“Why did this guy call me an idiot?” I thought, not able to make any sense out of his curse, aimed specifically at me.
Suddenly a gust of cold air blew over, trembling me further causing the right side of my face, from where the bus had raced past, feel cooler than the left side.
“What’s the problem? Did I develop any abnormality?” I pondered as I touched the left cheek which I perceived, was absolutely fine.
Then I felt the right side, I was aghast to sense a slimy, foul smelling fluid smothering the right part of my face, gently streaming down from the side, just below the eye line in the direction of my chin.
“What on earth could this be?” I wondered, cautiously placing my right index finger on my cheek, groping, subsequently sniffing the fluid.
The realization of it eventually struck in me, the moment I made an effort unknowingly to inhale the filthy liquid… Yes! By now you should have guessed it!! The slimy fluid was nothing else but saliva splattered all over, at one side of my face. I demanded the man and the moment back from God so that I could thrash him to my satisfaction but later when I recalled the incident, leisurely, I realized that it was not such a good idea. The saliva in the meantime had reached the end of my chin, ready to start dripping at any point of time.
“I have to act quickly!! But how will I clean it?” I asked myself as my mind was occupied with the dilemma of cleansing it and getting rid of the repelling smell off my face.
I did not possess a water bottle because of my own silly fault, no handkerchief either, and I did not want to wipe off the sickening secretion using my school shirt, scared of the mocks my friends would articulate, when they would discover the offensive, stinking odor emanating out of my shirt.
“Is this what you call freedom?” I questioned the man in my mind. I still do not know, even after so many years, from where did this question or even the actions that I was just about to perform, flashed within me, being a small boy of ten that I was.
The words of my maternal grandfather, who was a passionate freedom fighter in his early years, later studied to become a benevolent doctor, resurfaced in me, providing an appropriate solution, thus rescuing me from the disgraceful position.
“Son!! Always remember, our soil is our mother, just as you love your mother, love and respect your motherland the same way. She will always come to your rescue!” my grandfather had once enlightened me when I was a small boy, perched on his dispensary table.
“Yes! The soil, it will rescue me!!” I said to myself delightfully and innocently picking up a handful and rubbing it over the spit.
The soil absorbed the saliva as it fell down to the ground in bits, rendering my face clean, emitting an endurable fragrance replacing my previously battered face. The transformation in me was evident from that moment onwards as I quietly embarked on a journey of my own which was to rediscover India, desiring to know her through my own eyes.
I started reading Jawaharlal Nehru’s book “The Discovery of India” after this incident, which, by the way is the first book that I have read, completing it at a tender age of eleven. But considering my age and power of understanding at that time, I was unable to grasp the intentions relating to the sequence of outrageous events with which the book had been written by Dr. Nehru. Few years down the line when I came across the dramatization of it in ‘Bharat Ek Khoj’ broadcasted by Doordarshan, the haziness cleared away presenting an evident picture of the horrific tales, frame by frame. Hindustan as it was earlier known, was always a land to conquer, from the Dravidians and Aryans to the British, it has constantly been raided and conquered by inhabitants storming from the north, despite the natural barriers provided by the Himalayas, vying for it’s rich and productive soil.
The widely acclaimed feature film ‘Gandhi’ was more of an eye-opener for me in many ways than a film depicting Mahatma Gandhi’s life. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the 1947 butchering of millions when India and Pakistan were crowned to be two separate sovereign states, dented my mind irreparably as I imagined my soul to be amongst those inhumanely acts of shame and disgrace. Looking back, glancing at the chapters of Indian History books that I studied during my school days, I could not find a single one to my liking where such cruel, barbarous acts were scripted at length, let alone the thought of penning a whole book on those gruesome days and times. Even to this day I cannot find one book on 1947 violent mass killings, made available in any school curriculum. What will our future generations learn? Freedom to us came at a cost!!! It just did not fall all by itself from the sky or heavens above!!! If our future generations do not learn how and at what cost India gained her freedom, our mother is bound to be vandalized again and again!
The land of Mauryas, Magadhas, Chalukyas, Guptas, Cholas, Pandyas, snake charmers, elephants… have given way to a land of famished beggars, perverts and money ravenous traitors. Did our ancestors win us freedom to visualize our ‘Bharat Mata’ in such pathetic state?
Does freedom mean spitting just about anywhere and everywhere? Does freedom mean, engaging in, corruption, eve-teasing, communal riots disrupting the harmony between states over trivial matters, burgling, playing petty politics with peoples life and money?
All of us want to be in a world of our own, enjoying life to the extreme. When an opportunity comes we all casually abandon our motherland and proceed to settle down in a foreign territory adopting an alien culture leaving our mother at the hands of hungry hyenas and jackals who keep scrapping her bit by bit, feasting on her, making her hollow from inside. The mother always feeds and shelters us throughout our whole life, and is this the way to repay for her unselfish deeds?
For generations our mother has been humiliated and most of us have stood beside her, watching calmly the dishonor caused by many of her and other extraneous people, how much more pain and suffering can she bear?
Why do we have to celebrate our independence on 15th August? Why can’t we celebrate it every day? Why can’t we remind ourselves every single day that this is not the freedom that our freedom fighters had dreamt of, for them freedom meant driving away the British, thereby allowing their own people to live in peace and harmony, but did we manage to fulfill their aspirations? Rhetorical isn’t it? The answer well known!!!
Independence for us has acquired a different meaning all together, forcefully believing it to be a fundamental right of behaving in whatever way we desire, doing whatever we feel like and above all disregarding our mother and poverty stricken countrymen.
Yes probably by now our honorable prime minister may have hoisted the flag and delivered his Independence Day speech and some of us may have heard or slept over it, but does it serve the purpose? Even the flag hoisting takes place at a monument built by our invaders!!! Why can’t you celebrate the day in every other village… nominating one, in turns, each year???
‘Look around sir!!! We still have the same problems and difficulties which seem to have existed in our country for ages…’
‘How do you plan to eradicate them?’ if you ask, then probably another speech will be ready at his finger tips to be delivered and silenced.
‘Which is the first and foremost conundrum that you plan to work upon?’ if someone asks again, then I don’t think you will get an answer, because of the enormity of them. They leave behind internal matters and issues and roam the world for most of the five years term dealing with so called external matters and return back at the end of it to beg for votes.
Here is my question to you… How do we salvage the lost pride and glory of our mother?
As far as I am concerned we need to salvage her one at a time… taking up education and literacy at the forefront, in an utmost priority. Start it from your home, your own society…. We need to educate people and the future generations about her glorious past, the lives sacrificed in order to set her free…I know some people who have dedicated and still are in the process of laying their lives for our country; we need to join hands and extend our strong support towards them. My rediscovery and redemption of my mother, though carries on and will carry on till my last breath….
When the British administration led by Lord Curzon in 1905 ordered that Bengal must be partitioned into East and West Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore cried out to his countrymen by writing this song… translated in English by me… which I hope conveys my sentiments, paying a tribute to my mother…
‘O’ my mother, I bow down to your holy soil,
……
O’ my mother I sleep in your lap and will die here too,
…….
You have always fed me and given me everything, my mother,
But I cannot recollect anything that I have given back to you.
I have wasted my life in doing useless work,
But you have given me all the strength I needed, O’ my mother,
……..
O’ my mother, I bow down to thee.’
‘I have come with much expectation my dear mother; please call me near you,
Please do not return me empty handed, O’ my mother.
……….
No one loves the needy and the poor,
But I know you will nurture them,
………..
I do not need anything else, but to call you my “mother”,
I do not need anything else, but to lay beneath your foot,
If you will not nurture me then who else will care for me?
If you will not nurture me then where do I go sobbing?
……….
I have come with much expectation my dear mother; please call me near you,
Please do not return me empty handed, O’ my mother.’
