August 15th, the day when about 1 billion people turn patriotic. The day when India got its independence. One can see national flag and colors across the country. Be it big Shopping malls, offices, shops, Social networks, dresses, news. Every inch of this vast land one can find people are celebrating this special day. Especially when this activity happens with effort of a billion people the effect is tremendous. For one day, this vast and diverse nation seems to be one integrated necklace of colourful beads. From outside it looks like a scene of celebration, of joy, of freedom. But, freedom from whom, for what and what do we do with this freedom?
I am sure many has defined freedom in various contexts from various positions. It is a very subjective word. One of the abstract definitions that I heard recently was, “Freedom means making your own choices”. I liked this very much. It covers so many dimensions; political, personal, professional, social, religious, regional, as a citizen or as a human being. Whatever may be the situation we should be able to make our choices. It has a deep connection with the output of choices, results of those choices and how we react to those. However, that I believe is step further and a very different topic. May be I will write about it some other day. Irrespective of the results, first we should be able to make our own choices, our decisions if we are free.
Are we able to do that? Do we really make our own choices? Some may agree some not. It depends on the topic and its length, breadth and depth that we are ready to analyse.
- We choose what we eat, drink or wear:
- Is it our choice or is it the business and its marketing skills that make us believe it is our choice?
- We choose what we study:
- Do we? or is it influenced by what others are doing, how someone has define the options, how much are we able to pay?
- We choose our work/profession:
- Is it influenced by what other is ready to offer you, or what is available for selection, or what is decided by your boss or influenced by your family? or is it what you would do to keep on following the rat-race? Or is it because you need something to survive?
- One of the modern day activity, we choose our phones.
- Do we know why we made this decision? Is it really what we want? Was it influenced by peer pressure or product company?
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| Young girl celebrating independence for income |
I have left many of the other points that are probably very specific to India. There are many such scenarios, which once we start to peel off the layers, it gets complicated to find a simple straight forward answer. With such a fast evolution or may be I should say human led revolution, questions and answers have become complicated. We really do not know who is pulling the strings for what reasons.
I listened to the Prime Minister’s (PM) Independence speech today. I do not remember when was the last time I heard it before. But, I was glad that I heard it today. It was not a monotonous machine like oration of facts and policies. It was a speech with depth and speaker added some kind of soul in its delivery. It made a point that, to be effective, a speech does not need to be written and refined by various editors. Speaker need to have a connection with the subject and to be able to add feeling in it.
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| Source : http://katiebenson.wordpress.com |
However, it was a mixed feeling when in “Modern India”, after almost 70 years of Independence, its PM had to raise the point of Female infanticide. It is not the only country where it is practiced. But, I won’t write about that. It is such a bad feeling and one can see it, feel it in day to day interactions. It really made me think again, is this the Independence we celebrate where one does not even have the freedom to be born!!
I had never heard our current PM before, I felt that people say right that he can connect with people at very basic level. I hope and wish that PM and India has successful future.
Looking forward to the day when families will smile side to side equally when a child is born irrespective of if it is boy or a girl.
Keep smiling.
Arundeep