"India will awake to Life and Freedom"

14th August, 2012, Tuesday:

An early morning conversation between A and B:

A: Your friend called from India. They have a holiday there tomorrow.

B: (Busy packing lunch, doing the last touch ups) --- Holiday in India?

A: It's 15th August! Come on!
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14th August 2012 Tuesday @ Work:

X: Hi, did you watch the Olympics?

Y: Yeah I did. So how many medals did your country win ?(with a smirk)

X: (Clueless)...I don't get it you are from Maharashtra right?

Y: Ah Plzzz. Gimme a break... I'm here for the last 10 years and I have applied for US citizenship. I don't belong to that country of 1 billion bastards.

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It's 15th August tomorrow. India's 65th year of independence. Six decades have passed and new India boasts of nuclear power, IT bigwigs,glitzy malls, branded cars and carefully hides its grim third world reality...

65 years back:

14th August, 1947: A small town in Dhanbad, Bihar. Somewhere the radio blared Jawaharlal Nehru's Tryst with Destiny speech:

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom."

A little kid rushes to his mother and badly wants her to buy the Indian flag for him. She consoles the kid and promises him that they will make one of the best tricolor, better than the ones his friends bought.

She takes out one of her starched white saree and prepares the vegetable dye for the tricolor.

On a August midnight, as India was about to celebrate her freedom, at the backdrop of a dim lantern light in a small town in Bihar, the mother and the son deftly etched each stroke of Ashok Chakra on a cotton starched saree.

15th August 1947: The boy proudly lifted up the tricolor on a wooden fence. The tricolor was hoisted up in the air. The saffron was not the perfect shade of saffron neither the green was India green. But the little boy felt a strange sense of excitement and pride as he hoisted the flag.

She stood right there. Her eyes glistened as she looked at her son.

For years she had dreamt of this independant India.

"And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

JAI HIND!"

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On this date, I salute to all the heartfelt wishes and emotions that makes us all proud as Indians.