· That there is no dearth of food, shelter and relationships in all our one billion lives.
· That all of us, who belong to the land by dint of ancestry, birth, love or merely by affiliation, learn to see beyond the immediate ‘now’ of time. May we see beyond the wounds of a hundred years ago and arrogance of the current economic surge; beyond the age when India dominated the world’s trade into the future that will be of our own making, on our terms.
· That we live, work, prosper and play beyond the boundaries of caste, religion and region while respecting them and that we all are treated equally in the name of law regardless of caste, religion and region.
· That while we prosper from the land of 'snake charmers' into a land of a billion opportunities, we retain our ability to chose our lifestyle; that no corporate gurus or fashion mongers tell us how to eat/live/dress/walk/live and die.
· That we hold our heads high and speak out our mind without fear of offense to any power and yet we retain our warmth in our dealings with other countries.
· That our media which uses 95-99% of its print/visual space to ask the “why” question and only the remaining to the “how” question, reverses its trend.
· That the current generation of thugs/thieves/scam mongers/ film or television stars/ wastrels who make a career out of politics stay out of it for at least five generations (after which, it would be welcome to have someone who could provide us with some entertainment on the Loksabha floor like ahem.. a certain governor in the US). I wish the same minds that help MNC’s make billions of money come together to help us reap the true benefits of democracy.
· That we learn to teach our kids to follow their dreams and not ours and we may have many Bindres
. That people like me (thanks to the very Indian education system that we can’t stop cribbing about) who have secured a slightly better lifestyle than most others back home in India don’t forget to give back.
Who better than Tagore to articulate the wish?
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Happy Independence Day, dear fellow Indians.
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