It’s the I-Day week. The tricolour is taking over people’s profile pictures on Facebook. Incidentally, this weekend I also complete six months living away from India. Under the myopic lens, I am glad I have the day off (Friday, the Middle East’s Sunday) or I know I would have cribbed to no end. But my end of day media consumption has triggered an emotion that I have been trying to communicate unsuccessfully since the pre-election days.
This video on women’s safety in India got me thinking. I won’t go by the title on the page, but it drives home one point for me – that India is home and nothing should make one want to leave it for good. Yes, many people are more practical than that and leave for a more comfortable/peaceful/safer/saner/ life elsewhere. But I take comfort in the fact that I will return sooner than later. Because as hypocritical as we may be as a society, we have the liberty to raise our voice if we want to. There’s the freedom to call a spade a spade if you feel like it. A light exchange with friends led me to say yesterday that the Middle Eastern countries that are peaceful today are those that are politically correct. I don’t think I realized what I said until after I did. And as disheartening as it is to say this, I think we take for granted that being in India allows us to be who we are. I am not saying we don’t have laws that are irrelevant or enforcement agencies that are ineffective or SO MANY PEOPLE who are plain fucked up. But we have our freedom of speech and make no mistake that few things in the world are as repressive as not being allowed to express a thought.
In the recent months, I have been torn between being tolerant and being impatient towards some of the things that our generation faces or resists in India. I sometimes feel we do not need to react to situations as wildly as we do – the Sachin-Sharapova episode (both sides of the argument) – and at times it’s as if our voices are getting lost in the oblivion – there are endless examples of this, aren’t there? But the reality is that sane voices of change exist and we’ll have to patiently and optimistically wait for a time when we evolve to be a better society. We are messed up as a country, but we have hope. Because we have a voice.
Here’s to a better 68 years, a better generation ahead!
