Independence Day

History taught in schools instilled the meaning of freedom in our young minds for the first time. Media played its subtle role and nowadays explicit in exploiting the Shining India menu to everyone who can fall prey to. Ofcourse the markets are at an all time high, growth story is catching on and global crises help sometimes in making us look better. But frequent and persistent power cuts, lack of sanitation and clean drinking water seem to be out of reach to those who dont appreciate the Shining India bandwagon and this percentage is sometimes a mind boggling 80 percent.
Will this 80 percent cherish the thought of being free or have any hope as they sleep hungry when tons of grains get wasted in the godowns.Will we able to rekindle the fire of freedom in our lives like when we read about independence, the midnight speech and many such historic events. As we grew up and hoped India would be a superpower in the late nineties, then in 2000 and now revised to 2010 or 2020 will there be a day we would erase hunger and poverty instead of being content that we are better than Africa or any other third world nation.
Hope can defined as the fortunate 20% percent trying to uplift the remaining 80 perecent on this independence day. Celebration can be defined when Anil Kumble hit a century and we have won the series on British soil after a couple of decades. Resolve could be defined when we wake up to see kids marching through the streets on Independence day and promise ourselves that we could make a small difference.
With great potential comes the onerous task of reaching out to the impossible, live up to it or atleast lets try lest the 80 percent continue to suffer for us shrieking the effort.
Lets celebrate Independence Day and promise ourselves although we have inherited freedom but we would surely play a small part to instill deja vu in the next generation as they read about us in the history books.

The mask

When we cant live up to what the situation demands we wear a mask. As a kid your school would impose the dos and donts , you never wanna live according to them but then we create the first mask. Our parents expectations demand a new mask entirely for them, a kind of scoial mask which would hlep you gain social acceptance. In college we go for the coolest mask and we end up with uncool grades.You see a beggar on the road and wear a pitiful mask. Go to a church and wear a faithful mask.

Our interactions with different age groups compel us to create a mask across different speheres of our life. Move onto your professional life you develop a mask for your peers, subordinates, seniors and ofcourse willingly create a mask for our customers with the blessing of our seniors. Later on if you manage to get a chick you have to wear a mask for her and ofcourse she would have a equally good mask for you.

The concept of mask is so dangerous that we wear a mask in the mornings when we seek forgiveness and another mask when we want to indulge in our vices. So who are we, will we never be able to get rid of this mask or the mask keeps evolving and we keep losing ourselves.

Couple of days a colleague was stressing on the importance of having a sounding board, something like a confidante..be it your parents, mentors or a spouse or somebody like that who would have probably seen more of your different masks and would identify what the real you wants.When will the time come where we can learn to refuse right away rather than put a mask and give a diplomatic yes and then we fail to deliver and put another mask to cover up the failure. But as we live in this mask some part of us becomes like these masks and we end up relating more with the frequently used mask.

Suddenly a time would come when would not need any of these masks and be terrified seeing our real selves. Till then I'm putting down the blogging wala mask and being the sabbath will try the mask for faithful and seek forgivesness for my other masks. And of course I know I would be forgiven after all its the damn Mask.