Nerve Endings Firing Away

In all the Olympic brouhaha, I totally skipped mentioning India’s Independence Day. Not that, I am expected to do so to prove my patriotism but sometimes attending the I-Day parade at your school is the closest we ever come to reminding ourselves that we are Indian. The fact that I am even mentioning this day so late is not helping my cause either. Only two incidences of remembering 15th August stand out in the last 27 occasions that I have been present. Usually, we have a mundane rainy flag hoisting ceremony in the morning. It is followed by obviously fake and boring speeches by our normally cane-wielding principal, who for the rest of the year forgets the principle of non-violence; upon which our struggle for independence was based. We sing some rousing patriotic songs; strangely the same every year always making me wonder that didn’t anyone writing patriotic songs these days. But then, to sing AR Rehman’s Maa Tujhe Salaam would be awfully difficult and would cause total chaos in the already besuraa public and Sandese Aate Hai(Border) would sound horribly out of context. Thankfully, we are let off early after much shouting of Jai Hind.

The first Independence Day that I remember was when I was in 9th grade and was in a new school. One of my classmates was pretty vocal about his patriotic sentiments and insisted we declare our loyalties right then. It would be pretty bad to disappoint him by not screaming Jai after his extremely loud “Bharat Mata ki; ” Someone finally managed to calm him down but not after a wild fight when some smart ass completed the chant with an objectionable invective. We all were herded into our classrooms and given tiny paper flags, which unfortunately always fell by the roadside after the ceremony. But the moment of truth came when I had to try hard to avoid the jabs of my classmates at the Chief Guest, who incidentally was my dad. Finally after the hundredth “When will he shut up and let us go home?” comment, I finally said aloud, “I had asked him to keep it short when he was writing it last night“. Everyone froze and one brave soul managed to ask me, “What do you mean?” I repeated myself again until then the smarter ones in the class managed to guess that the boring speaker was my dad. No one spoke for a while but I loved it. Everyone waited silently for the speech to end, which thankfully ended in a short while. Trying to make up to me, the vociferous patriot from the bus said that my dad’s speech had changed his life and he was going to devote his life in service of the country. I laughed out and said that it was alright and I didn’t really mind the complaints. He heaved in relief and said, “Gee thanks, I was planning to become a money-hoarding, labor-exploiting bania anyways“.

The second Independence Day was the 50th anniversary, circa 1997. I was in third year of my undergraduate college and everyone’s idea of a holiday was to head the nearby village resort and drowse themselves in alcohol. A teetotaler then, I was dragged along in the glorious role of a designated driver. But all I remember from that night is singing the national anthem with my drunk friends; some swaying wilding and singing out of tune at the stroke of midnight. Poor Nehru must have turned in his grave at such blatant disrespect to his tryst with destiny. No one remembered the incidents the next morning. Such patriotism but then slogging our butts off for sixteen hour workdays trying to complete the so-hated submissions gives you that need to party harder. All holidays are just the same.

This year, I finally dragged myself to the local Festival of India organized by the Indian-American association. As expected, the show was full of classical Indian dances. I don’t have anything against the traditional form of Indian dance. But sitting through more than ten different forms, involving three Bharatnatyam performances, two Kuchipudi, and host of other Odisi, Manipuri, Kathak interspersed with Bollywood dances performed by weird sounding troupes like Silent Killers (where did they get that from?). But anyways, a little touch of India doesn’t hurt much on the Independence Day.