Hard not to get affected!

A new practice was introduced a few years ago where the Movie Theaters in India play the National Anthem before the start of every movie. A note requests the audience to stand-up for the National Anthem and then a video of the National Anthem is played on the screen. Different theaters have been displaying different videos with renditions from a variety of artistes and in a variety of styles – India being so diverse with so many different regional / local singers, different singing styles, etc. As like every country’s National Anthem, my country’s National Anthem evokes a strong sense of patriotism and feeling of being alive. Of course, what follows more often than not would be a mindless Hindi movie with the usual “review label” issued by your friends – “keep your brains aside and its a timepass masala movie”. (Before you go accusing me of encouraging such movies by granting them business, I have watched only a few choicest movies in the Theaters).

I thought I had seen all versions of my country’s National Anthem when unexpectedly, I came across this “silent” version of the Indian National Anthem. It is very hard not to get affected! I was just not in control of myself and tears and emotions were playing a havoc. The “real me”, that I keep trying to bury in this insensitive city, surfaced without a warning and it was difficult to compose myself for a while.

All the angst buried just under the surface erupted and I cursed my fellow Indians for what they had done to our city, our state and our country. Filthy, illiterates – educated and uneducated alike, living in “kalyug” – a very sinful age, have turned the country into one big dumpster with mindless corruption, mindless construction, garbage everywhere, potholes everywhere, no civic sense and above all “no sensitivity”. And they had the gall to make these mute, blind and deaf handicapped children sing this hopeful and patriotic national anthem of a country that just doesn’t care about them.

Cool down you handful of sensitive guys (who are at least doing something for these handicapped people) and let me finish what I have to say. And shut up you rest of the supposedly patriotic guys who silence anyone who speaks about the ills affecting our country. Patriotism doesn’t mean that you write patriotic comments praising your country to the sky while sitting at your computer. Whatever few schools we have for the handicapped Indians are not enough. Whatever is being done by the sensitive few is just not enough. My heart cries out aloud when I see the total lack of sensitivity on the streets of Mumbai. Not one footpath is wheelchair friendly. Not one road is without potholes. The crowds just don’t have time and keep pushing and running around with no time to wait whether someone lives or dies. Footpaths are either littered with human excreta or garbage or with hawkers or with illegal shop extensions. Drain holes are not covered, roads and foothpaths are broken. And there is so much dust, so much honking, so much jostling around. This city is not fit for the so called “regular” humans, forget the handicapped. We don’t follow rules, everyone for oneself, rushing around. And worst, we have now started justifying it. It doesn’t have to be this way. Gandhiji died trying to teach the masses cleanliness, to follow some basic civil rules, to be humans and not cattle! What have we turned this country into? Just big nullas and gutters running in the open everywhere!

Go to a hospital, go to a government office, go to a morgue. We are so bloody corrupt that we don’t leave anyone. Not even the dead! Where is that sensitivity? Where is that patriotism? Are we really human? In truth we are just a nation of “thieves”. And we don’t care for the so called “normal” people, who has time for the handicapped? We make the life so tough for them and behave as if they should just die! I have been heart broken at story after story that I have read of the suffering of the handicapped people. Even if you have money, it doesn’t count in a country like India. It’s the nature of the people and the total insensitivity to the handicapped that is sickening. Ask Malini Chib or any of the thousands of handicapped who have suffered and asked for understanding and sensitivity but can not live their life here. And we will keep chanting about “hamaara culture, hamaari parampara”. Bull shit!

I know its not all bad, but just rise a few thousands feet above the earth and look down. The more progress India makes, the more its population grows. We are truly like bacteria eating up this earth mindlessly. We don’t care if other inhabitants of our land die or displace. Animals, birds, insects, plants, nothing! We will keep expanding the concrete jungle with polluted air, crazy noise and chaos without pausing to think, to bring in order, to be humans who care for everyone.

Ya, ya… rest of you critics can rise up now and shut me up as a depressed person looking at only the negatives. That there are people like the makers of the “silent” national anthem too. Like the school for such handicapped people. Like the good people who are putting up a fight and doing something about this. But my point is that this is simply not enough. Why are a majority of us not like them? Why do we have to let things degenerate so badly first for a few decades before we wake up to make things better? Are you all really blind to what is happening around us? Am I the only one to see?

There’s so much to do. It seems daunting and impossible. But I guess India will continue down this current ruthless path of so called progress boisterously, without a care in the word, without any sensitivity. What is going to happen, will happen. Don’t stop, don’t think. Just keep expanding, just keep pushing. The meek will perish. The boisterous will survive. No accountability. No justice. We will find solutions from the point of recognizing the problem, will not go back to find the original culprits. And I have to survive this painful torture of seeing all this in slow motion. What have we turned this country into. I feel like letting out a primal animal cry and wring some necks and then claim back my country and try to get us all to progress in a more humanly fashion where all 0f us can live a bit orderly. Why this rant? Why this tirade? Because it feels so helpless and weak not to be able to change things! This is just a cry of anguish from a defeated and tired and cranky person. Finish me off just as all others who tried to speak out, speak against what we are turning this country into and end my misery.

See this video of “The Silent Indian National Anthem” and tell me if it doesn’t affect you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNidDP7JRHA