Happy Independence Day

What does Independence day mean to you?

All my childhood right from my home, school, college, friends and society I was told that it is to celebrate the great feat of showing the British the door and driving them away with nothing but non-violence and Satyagraha. Something that happened over fifty years ago. This was the reason why I could do what I am doing now sitting in my room comfortably blogging! I have food to eat, dresses to wear, a cover over my head and money in the bank. I can roam freely in my city and have an education, 15 bank accounts, 8 credit cards, bike, Internet, my parents have a great job and so on! All I need to do on an Independence day is to wake up late, as there is no office or college, brush late and keep watching TV for to avoid independence day special movies, chat with some unknown online friend, order a pizza with coke and when bored get a DVD (hold on I would order one, thank god for the independent India I have a phone and even the DVD rental guy has one!) and get back to sleep.

Or may be I could call up some of my friends to come over (I hate traveling on a holiday) and play a video game or watch some boring stuff on the idiot box while munching on Big Mac Burgers, sipping coke and watching MTV or some foreign channel! If bored I have my own collection of Bryan Adams, Jackson, Iglesias in my lappie which I can connect to my imported speakers to have an excellent feel of the thump! By evening we could order some junk food and spend chatting up about idiotic bosses, funny colleagues pulling each others leg, cursing the government for the power cuts, thanking Michael Faraday for inventing the generator (Did he?) until each one of us is tired and starts to snore and has to be sent home before they get too comfortable.

Or we can book a ground for playing cricket! Yes it's Independence Day dude! everything has to be booked in advance: movies, hotels, parlors, tourist plans, vehicles and even theme parks as its gonna be crowded to the hilt and spilling. Oh how long since we played cricket. Bharat scored his all time best score, some 18 runs of 24 balls, and was the man of the match! No he was not the last batsman, he opened the innings. Well, that he can critique Sachin , Saurav, Dhoni and advice BCCI, Ramakant Achrekar is a different issue. But on the field he is the best of us and you know what is the on-field experience. I think it is time for us to play this 15th! We can go to Ohri's in the evening and spend our evening there talking about our exploits and dreaming of 'representing India in the international arena' as Gandhi puts it! No this is the RJ not the 'dhotiwala' Gandhi. He has tatooes, lip and eyebrow piercings and has the f*** word permanently in his vocabulary. He has one good quality though which is that he conserves water; by drinking beer, of course. That seems to be a nice plan for the day! No bosses, no schedules, no targets, no assignments, no profs, no exams, no classes, no problems, no nothing! Only bliss, freedom, independence and masti.

No we don't care if a person dies every 3.6 seconds due to starvation all over the world (I can't feed all?), 36 crore Indians don't eat anything for the day (Good for them no need to enroll in any weight loss program or try very hard to achieve Kareena's Zero figure or Sharukh's Six pack), women are beaten, molested, killed, made to work hard, underpaid (I don't do it nor is it done to any of my friends or relatives. So why bother?). I don't care if people beat up each other, loot kill or die on the streets in some other state or some other colony or street (I am safe right). I dont care if children are malnourished, uneducated, illegally employed, beg on the streets and are traded like animals (Not mine and I don't do). I read this news everyday! So I don't care! I don't care if Mala's (my maid servant) daughter drops out of school as she couldn't afford the fees (its her bad luck), if some one dies in the traffic (Must have ignored the seatbelt! Thank God I am insured). I don't care if the prices rise (I have a decent salary and why the heck is government doing anything about it?). Pass on the Bangalore times, lemme check the latest fashion fad and I should add a reminder in my new 16 GB iPhone 3G to pick it up from Garuda tomorrow! What should I do otherwise? Pick up some Tee from my 500 odd old ones stuffed in the cup board? BTW I should give the green one to Mala's elder son on Independence day! He has been nagging me for an old dress for long. You know what I like this one. I bought it when I was in my 10th class in 1996. I should send a mail to my boss justifying why I should get my hike this month mildly threatening that I would quit unless it is hiked. Hey I should also check my email and ensure that I forward an email to everyone in my address book a nice greeting wishing them happy Independence day!

Oh! I should check where I have kept the small trinket of Indian tricolor that I have been saving for the last 4 years. I remember using it on 24th January (was it 24th or 26th?) when all my office colleagues were going 'Ooh' and 'Aah' when I pinned it to my Lee jacket, right over my heart. I don't want to buy one this year, it has become costly! Who would pay 7 Rs for the trinket? I am not a politician! BTW, I have to feign illness tomorrow and go without makeup. There is some blood donation camp at work and they want some free donors. C'mon I am not succumbing to the Dracula (Pranitha)!

Lemme tell you about Pranitha here. She is sick, emotionally depressed and such not-a-fun aunty types who doesnot have any sense of humour. She spends all her time reading some stupid books, writing silly articles about child care, women health, litreracy and stuff. Dracula is what we call her. She organizes all the blood donation camps, comes around with a box slit in the top begging for alms (collecting funds) for some stupid child's operation in some government hospital, or to pay some dropouts fees and so on. Though I like to relieve my purse of all unwanted coins (It gets heavy with all the coins in it) its her peaceful, smiling face that hurts me a lot. She wears shabby clothes (must have been from the Egyptian Mummies), no make up, no perfume and so on! You know what? She oils her hair and comes to office that way! You should never go shopping with her or for that matter anywhere! All the beggars, hawkers on the street know her and mill around her calling Pranitha didi and flash their unkempt, diseased, shabby, dirty teeth and hold her hand. She thinks it is cool!!! Yaak! She even visited a mental asylm on her b'day and treated all the dumbos there, spent her full evening there! Gimme a break. After all what all changes can she make? Can she change the whole of India? Can she eradicate poverty, unemployment, disease, pain from all the opressed? C'mon, she is not a Gandhi or Bose. The funny part is she think so! She thinks if all the employed in India help 2 poor people in a year all poverty would be eradicated by 2020! Some vision though! I hate her. We hate her. Every one I know hates her. So she must be having a lot of stupid plan for this 14th and15th. I should make a conscious effort to skip her this time. I couldn't do it last year. She was wearing a white cotton sari and had a flag on chest and washed! her hair and was so so cool, beautiful that everyone just followed her to the Draculian table to give blood. Some said she looked soo peaceful and happy! May be yes. She always is! I can be fooled once, but not again.

So unless you are like this old aunty Pranitha and want to waste your time helping someone, doing something for the country stuff? chill out and plan to have a blast and tell me what you did on this Independence day! As for me, I would rock , blast and have a hell of a time from morrow till Sunday!

Happy Independence Day!