AS A MATTER OF FACT……

It was the first time that a Prime Minister didn’t attend the Republic Day Parade. Never mind , our Defense Minister, the man responsible for showing the powerful muscles we have developed to bust our neighbors out attended it, more likely he deserved it. And the parade went off well, though shortened to 90 minutes, the parade was filled with all the bravery, the gallantry, the valour, it was like a tabloid that was used to convey , that here we are facing the old world, creating the new world , and as Nandan Nilkeni said,”The playing fields are leveled” .
So, India, technically, became 59 years old, can say it like this that it became 59 years of self dependent. We got so much on this day, and we can’t forget and neglect the “ides of Aug.”, when we licked , tasted and enjoyed the freedom for the first time. We owe a lot to these days, though quite truthfully speaking they are not celebrated but, ……. . And my pen stops, yes , they are not celebrated…..oops….sorry not celebrated ….so what do we do, we hoist the flag , sing the national anthem, abuse the british, eat a “laddoo”, then again abuse one Briton, watch a movie thereafter, and a puff of abuse again reiterates. At the end of it all, a voice comes , “Had British not come here…”.
After throwing this voice in the mid air , one turns on the heater and goes to sleep, the voice , though, lingers down in the ground, craving for an answer. Last night, I saw the dying voice under my bed, I quickly arranged some medics for it, and then when it laid in the bed, I went to search for the most important medicine of all “ it’s answer”. And I was amused , exasperated, not because I could not find the answer, but because I had found one. It was as under….
Had they not come , India would…, oh sorry, there would have been no India then, small petty, states glued to each other. What would have Mahatama Gandhi done then. Ooh …shit, why Mahatama Gandhi would have come. My thoughts were going on a roller coster of a ride. No 1857, no struggle, no Mangal Pandey, nothing , every thing would have been a vacuum. Our NCERT based History books would have been half as thick.
Then I turned my attention towards the partition, ok so now , had British not come, we (India and Pakistan, would have been one. So no India Pakistan matches, no 1971 war, no Kargil, no “ Border”…I was now in the gallows of my thoughts. We would have been neighbours of Afghanistan, thus tormented by Al Quaida (and US) all the more. Jia-ul Haq and Parvez Musharraf would have been our patriots.
The language , ummmm…English was out of the question, so what, Hindi, for that half of India had to be cut, urdu, tamil, …. It was hard for me to assess that ,especially, when India was the best English speaking county of the world. As India then, would have been about a thousand of states, so, there would have been no IAS, no PCS, thus, no dreams. My adventurous journey was now tainted by fear.
The architectural paradise of India , would have fallen short of a few bricks, bricks of the likes of …Rashtrapati Bhawan, Victoria Terminus, and as I was thinking about the other names , I thought the list would be too long. There would have been no Mall roads, no Shimla, no Nainital.
In that January cold , a tiny drop of sweat went out for a walk on my forehead which helped to divert my attention towards that ailing friend (that voice) of mine. It was smiling now. Perhaps it had got the proper treatment it needed. Me too, gave him the most stupid of my smiles, laid down in the bed , this time not abusing, but amused , by the fact that ..” Had they not come……”.