Freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved

A couple of hours away from the 65^th Independence Day (in fact it’d already be August 15^th in India), numerous thoughts cloud my mind; thoughts that could find no manifestation in words. After several unsuccessful attempts I could finally put together all the courage to give shape to those sporadic but worthwhile thoughts. Suddenly I started experiencing lack of proper media – a Facebook status update would restrict me in terms of space.

A post on Blogspot seemed to be a good idea; but then I thought – “Do I really need to post this?”
I could not figure out an answer.
So keeping all those doubts aside, I began writing; my laptop, I thought, would be the best place to keep it.

I had never before found myself so engrossed with such thoughts. There could be various reasons behind that – Maybe because I have been living abroad for some time now; or maybe I have started to grow up and think about things other than me and my immediate surroundings; or maybe I am at a vantage point from where I could easily look at what should be and should not be.

Are we really independent?
I know what a typical answer would be - “Hell yeah! Are you out of your minds?”
But spare a thought to this. Aren’t we enslaved by our own thoughts? Aren’t we engulfed by so much of self-interest that we don’t even bother to think beyond that?
A good half an hour and you might yourself start pondering over many more such questions?

I’m not here to question anyone; or to change anyone’s thoughts or opinions. I’d be much happier if that feeling comes on its own. Believe me; I’m not going to preach patriotism or nationalism over the next couple of paragraphs. All I’m trying to do is vent out my emotions – yes, emotions!

The dire situation of women in our society is what hurts me the most. I’m not trying to be a feminist. But imagine the plight of a woman. She might not feel safe the moment she steps outside the doors of her house; sometimes not even when inside them. A civilization can certainly survive with poverty, with not so prospering economy and high fuel prices, but with such disgustful attitude toward a section of the humanity that should be dealt with utmost respect is doubtful.

An extremely sarcastic person would say – “We are a democracy in the real sense! Everyone is free to do what they please to”.
He won’t be wrong in saying so. Terms like freedom and democracy have been so badly misconstrued that I doubt today are we even ready to accept the real meanings of those terms. A face-to-face with reality might scare us to hell.

Even a hardcore philanthropist would turn into an opposite upon very deep scrutiny of our newspapers daily - newspapers that are nowadays leading to nothing but cynicism. But they are not the only ones to be blamed. May be that is the ugly truth! Our TV News Channels have gone a step ahead, or should I say a whole stairwell ahead. In this case I won’t mind blaming them completely. If this continues for a long time, people of our country might lose faith in the system and might never expect good things coming their way. That would be doomsday.

The part of this whole chapter that bothers me the most is our attitude toward all that. We are either very critically vocal about them or we are just too cool to care. Some would very proudly write the whole issue off saying – “Things are beyond repair now”
But it’s never too late to mend. It is indeed not too late.
As someone rightly said – “The first step to solving any problem is recognizing that there is one”.
That certainly doesn’t mean declaring the problem as unassailable.
Only when you dream, would you achieve. Tell me one Indian that doesn’t dream of a nation where things were in the best possible shape. So we are already one step down that path. All we need to do is take further steps –just for some time keeping all our individual interests aside and looking at a rather bigger picture than just our own selves.

There certainly are many more thoughts still floating in the lake of my mind; but it seems now is not the right time to put them all together.
By now I have also figured out the answer to the question that I asked myself in the beginning. That is precisely why you are reading this.

With this, I bid all the readers a very happy Independence Day. Jai Hind!

P.S. I’ve borrowed the title of this article from the former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt