Independence Day: Who am I

I’m proud to be an Indian. Today is one of the proud days as this is the day when our great nation became independent from British rules after our glorious freedom fight.

Does it sound familiar? The tone – the language – the gesture of looking at the sky while saying this? To me it’s very familiar as I’ve sincerely attended all the Independence Day celebration well almost for a quarter of a century.

I’m a very sincere Indian ever since my birth. I’ve attended all possible this type of national celebration days. I’m democrat from my heart so I’ve paid my due respect irrespective of cast and creed – to Gandhiji, to Netaji Shubhash and for every other patriots. I have sang our national anthem every time from my heart. I clapped at the highest volume when someone raised our tricolor flag. Mostly it used to be our head master in our school and we all used to cheer him up with claps and not to mention some of the students used to have their own sounds to do the same. I distributed sweets in our hostel on these auspicious days before even eating it myself. I dressed myself in good clean clothes for these days. I’ve religiously followed almost all the things that a good Indian should do to celebrate these occasions.

I’m a good Indian. I respect Indian values like love, sacrifice, forgiveness and many more whose names I don’t know. You may wonder how I follow those values if I don’t know the names. But actually they are in my blood and from childhood I used to follow these principles. I get emotional at the stories of martyrs. I watch patriotic films with great interest. I get motivated with each motivational acts in those films. However, I don’t do anything in reality as result of that motivation but that’s secondary; isn’t it? I get angry when someone tells anything against my country even in light mood. However, I just let the anger go as I learned that anger is a sin. I just smile and politely say some words to support my country weekly.

You see I’m an average Indian who does the things which a good Indian should be doing. But I’m not a good Indian or should I rephrase it as I’m not a responsible Indian? May be more appropriate to say but does it make sense? I pay taxes regularly. I protest against every social humiliation by sharing posts in Facebook. But I never join any protest or any rally for a good cause. I only curse our politicians while discussing about my country with my friends. Does it reflect my responsibility towards my country? Please don’t look at me I’m already ashamed and tired of myself by doing these.

I say my country is not developing ever since I’m seeing her. But alas I don’t know what does this word ‘development’ really means for my country? However, I’m totally aware of every aspect of ‘development’ for myself. Every time I see potholes in the road, I curse the contractors and the Government. I think they are not doing their job properly. I pay taxes but then what is this? But I never think what I can do to fix it. Can I put some tree branches near it to make people avoid that for the time being? Yes I can do it but why should I? There are people to do that. I've other duties.

When my friends are not getting jobs, I see the recruitment system is corrupted. People seating in the responsible positions are not doing their job. But I myself work for a foreign company whose profit goes abroad. I never think of creating opportunity for others. I’m only happy with speaking of faults of others. When I wait hours after hour in a Government office I just curse the employees there. But I never see how to make the system more efficient. However, sometimes I do think how we can make things better. At that time a terrible thinking strikes me, who will look into these new things! None will look these and everything will go as it is going. But every tree starts from a seed – every new thing has to begin from an individual effort. These simple things are long forgotten as we became too busy with self-centered routine life.

A nation is not a responsibility of a few. It is our joint effort to make our nation a great nation.  If we can remove the ‘I’ from our heart we can do things that looks far beyond possible today. We always think politicians are corrupted and they are eating our country from inside. But how many of us has even thought of joining politics and mend the system from inside? How many of us thought of helping the needy people may it be time, finance or opportunity? There are ways where we can make ourselves better but we are too busy with individuals. We don’t have time to look around and breathe the same air. But if we do that, then nobody has to remind us about the Independence Day. We'll know the value of freedom from within. We’ll truly follow the path shown by our great patriots.