Post a Comment On: "I dream, the impossible dream."

“Into that heaven of freedom my Father, let my country awake.”
So wrote Rabinranath Tagore almost a century back…

I often wonder if we are reaching that awakening, no we are not quite there yet, but just the very fact that WE are witnessing it happen, for me, is my moment of history.
We get so busy getting past each day that we forget to live the bigger life.
So often we are busy painting our corner that we forget our canvas, the whole sky.

Today while I was reading the nth article that was talking about the India Story, suddenly I just stopped short. It was like a flash, like a little moment of jubilation; nothing too big but surreal all the same, my moment of discovery.
Treating myself to a smile, I wondered.
I have not seen India on the 15th August 1947. Rarely, provoked sometimes by my thoughts and mostly by a good movie, when I set to think about India that time, there comes this emptiness of only being able to imagine the spectacle, of being shunned from what the real moment was like. It’s like a story, played over and over without me being even a spectator, to imagine India gain Independence…But suddenly as I was reading that article today, another feeling swept past me.
That I am witnessing this great land rise to another kind of freedom.

Freedom, to assert itself. Freedom, to break the shackles and dare to realize dreams which it was weary of even imagining before. Freedom to stand up straight and walk the walk to which it had been only a witness until some years. Freedom, to look in the eye and not plead for mercy, but command respect. Freedom, to not just talk about its glorious past, but to look at the vibrant future. Freedom, to have the power to transform your thoughts into reality. Freedom, to feel proud that you belong. Freedom, to just be: India.

I wonder if we are witnessing this new kind of freedom, not the kind which transforms lives overnight but the one which metamorphosis sand into granite. The kind which isn’t a flash of the lightening, but more like an stream bursting from the heart of mountains, trudging the rocky path, making a whole river.

I wonder if we are witnessing the transition stage where after a few decades we shall be the sole remnants who would be left to tell the exciting story of what we were and where we are. The ones who are not just a part of the destination but ones who made it past the perils of the journey. The ones who would not just see the light but the ones who burnt their hands to create fire.

At the pace with which we are transforming, India in a few more decades will be a whole new story. Imagine telling your grandchildren that there were no TV’s when you were born; cell phones were a wonder that came only when you were passing from school. That a life existed without the internet and at max you were born in a house that owned an ambassador, then, how you paid 32 bucks to make a call, how you have seen 12 people in a theatre watching a "cross-over" movie, how NDTV was broadcasted just between 7-9 on Star Plus, how there used to be this small store next to your house which stocked possibly all the everyday items that you could imagine in a Wal-Mart now three blocks away, how you've waited for hours to let your server react to slow BSNL/MTNL connections, how Infosys Ranbaxy and Reliance were the few known entities making their mark, telling them the story of that you had SEEN Sachin bat and Amitabh act!!!

As you read these, you might be wondering how a few things are already archaic!!! History!! And you been the witness.

Probably I am romanticizing all of this. Probably, you dun feel your pulse racing discovering that we are indeed in the fast lane racing towards the future, leaving a whole era behind us. But that’s all right. Its okay to feel so when, one day, you would surf the History channel showing how India was transformed. And when you watch that series, then you might realize that this time you were amongst the few that created the Indian Dream.
That this time when India awoke, you were right there witnessing the dawn.