by Anupam Patra
A Gora on a political turf,
judged us a century ago
“there was no Indian nation
or country in the past
nor would there be one in future” he swore.
Certain he was that the sympathies
of a forced nation would never come together.
Is it because we are so many and so varied
that we are divided?
Is a country contoured by its internal walls −
its border drawn along the prejudice of citizens?
Or is it because, as Chirag –i – Dair claimed,
fidelity and faith have fled
from this Golden Bird’s nest?
Since the night our wings were returned,
we have cruised within a bubble of freedom,
floating and drowning alternately
within liberties and impositions.
Why is our independence neither absolute nor uniform?
Maybe because this soil remembers.
Here brother has always betrayed brother
for trifling jewels or a temporary throne;
perhaps this land believes we don’t deserve
what we claim to have won −
a belief corroborated by a desultory democracy.
Our confusions about our identity
give away our collective vice;
we celebrate when our differences are upheld,
we don’t care till trouble is knocking
the doors of our secure night;
shame is a rare visitor to our misguided self.
We grow under an ever-heaping pile
of sermons, rhetoric and blames;
we lack disgrace
when we sell our face-paint
to power vendors, credit distributors, indifferent allies
relentlessly stitching holes in our skin
that swallowed Asifas, Nirbhayas and stifled cries
whose echoes bathed our nights in despair
through which solitary Jawans endured
on forlorn cliffs, separated from their children,
convinced it was freedom they were guarding −
freedom to ravish and kill?
Ghalib’s lament taunts such sovereignty,
such an arena that endorses
the legacy of the mighty;
a playground for devotees of illusion
where idols are fed instead
of children with tangible stomachs.
Are we an irony? A democratic abomination?
A favourite joke of wise nations?
Perhaps it is oblivion, not freedom
that we have resigned ourselves
to celebrating year after year.
Where is the freedom from the shackles of hunger?
To live the glorious dream
we gave ourselves at midnight
in our tryst with destiny.
Where is the liberty for gender, or the lack of it,
to not turn into a weight?
Or for progress to not bring
fear of accusation against character?
Where is the freedom for an honest tiller
from the debts his earth forces him to incur?
Freedom here is either trifling or unfair, illusory or abused.
So, forgive me if I don’t join
in an annual celebration;
before those trumpets are blown
and balloons are flown,
an answer I must first find
to the burning question:
Is independence a curse for an unnatural nation?
