We wore ironed white uniforms and dashed off to school before 0800 Hrs. We pinned a paper flag to our breast pockets, loudly practiced speeches and songs, ran around with white powder to draw lines or with banners and ropes pasted with paper flags to hang, and wished each other a happy independence day. To the first bell, we all took our positions, marched along the playground to the drum beat, and made beautiful well-practiced formations. A chief guest hoisted the national flag and we sang the national anthem with lungs filled with air mixed with inexplicable pride. We sat down and listened to songs of national integration in various languages none of which we understood; then to speeches in Telugu, Hindi, and English all of which started with the clock striking twelve on that fateful night of August 15th 1947; and then to a few more speeches by some teachers, the principal and the chief guest all of which were peppered with adjectives and sesquipedalian abstract nouns. And we waited. Even after they were done, we controlled ourselves in long lines to collect some candy and biscuits. Thankfully, my brother gave me most of his share.
We went back home to find my dad watching the climax of some Hindi movie and my mom cooking brunch. After brunch was TV, lots of TV. We watched some programmes on the freedom struggle and at least two movies among the common patriotism list: allUri sItArAmarAju, bhAratIyuDu, Bombay, Dil Se, Roja, a few Manoj Kumar movies,… We must have caught a siesta somewhere in between. In the night after dinner was a proper war movie like Border. Chants of “Hindustan, Hindustan” and silly thoughts like, “Border must be shown to the soldiers at the border every night!” preceded our sleep.
That is how I remember my Independence Day celebrations a little over a decade ago. So much has changed.
Today I woke up late, checked mail and Twitter, and found it to be India’s 62nd Independence Day. (I neither get the newspaper nor have a TV.) Amused, I decided to test whether I could recall the national anthem. I fumbled the first time and got it right the second time. More amused and surprised.
I stepped outside my apartment. I walked an extra kilometre so as to not pay the auto driver the money demanded but pay as per the meter at least on this day. I saw zero banners and zero ropes with paper flags hanging between electric poles, and just one empty podium with speakers (an arrangement for the Ganesh Chaturdhi). I don’t know if it is the sudden swine flu scare, because I heard about Janmashtami celebrated in various places.
I had lunch with a friend, and found in his apartment that the umpteen TV channels were showing zero movies among the afore-mentioned common patriotism list. Two different five minutes of a never-heard-before new movie called Manorama proved that the movie was unwatchable unless you wanted to watch a Clock Tower shown in panoramic shots. We settled with handsome John Cusack and cute-like-a-puppy Minnie Driver in Gross Pointe Blank which was mildly entertaining except for a whacky climax.
Siesta, surfing, and TV again. The climax of bhAratIyuDu, at last, but after these many years of watching it and after cracking the blatant Shankar movie template, it was hardly interesting. We then saw Kamal Hasan in five different roles in half hour of daSAvatAram which seemed to suggest that the Americans must be getting obese by not walking even within offices.
During a sumptuous dinner in a restaurant we saw four desperate guys trying to squeeze the restaurateur for alcohol supply, and lightly touched on the subject of whether India would have been better off had it still been under the British rule. A blasphemous topic for prudes who call themselves patriots, but an interesting one for pretentiously objective adults. A larger group would have deliciously spiced up a debate. So we called it a night. I had a tiny row with an auto driver who did not want to use his meter and double tipped another auto driver who did use his meter.
The day didn’t seem like the Independence Day. So much that I felt compelled to document the mundaneness. Today, it has become a necessity to qualify it as the Indian Independence Day, for the American Independence Day is well within our awareness as much as the Indian. Not that it makes a difference because my previous perception of the Indian Independence Day had been that of parade and freedom struggle programmes and violent movies “against terrorism” – not about progress – and today I have become a person who likes to think of himself only as a citizen of the world, a member of this wretched mankind.
I listened to Sri Sri’s pADavOyi bhAratIyuDA and felt sad for him. Every line he then wrote still rings true. All India did was to give him the National Award for Best Lyrics, an award that may have had as little meaning to him as a cigarette butt did. Poetry to him was a means to fight for a better society. India may have progressed, but so little has been achieved and so much more remains. Independent India is already meticulously deluding itself with campaigns like “India Shining” and “Jai Ho!”. How much it has grown!