This Independence Day, think a little..

You wake up. You bathe. You go breakfast. It sucks as usual. You go attend a few classes. You skip a few. It doesn't matter you think. you come back. You suggest lunch. You lunch together, all five of you. You come back. You have classes you don't go to. You go to sleep. You wake up. Somebody suggests dinner. You eat dinner together. You buy coke and chips for your nightly excursion to sitcom land. You joke about how India's doing poorly in the test series. Someone cracks a joke about Ajit Agarkar. You laugh, Agarkar's funny (Bombay Duck, ha!). You come back. You download a few episodes. You watch them while you munch on chips. you feel sleepy. You go to bed. You curse the lack of a curtain rod, light streams through your window. You hang a bedsheet on the window. You go to sleep. You wake up. You bathe. You breakfast. It sucks as usual.

All this while, a storm rages around you. People call for a Jail Bharo Andolan. People call it the second freedom struggle. And oblivious to all of this, you curse your breakfast and take people's case on shoutbox.

Look around you. Do you see wanton corruption, hunger and poverty? Not really. At least not in your immediate surroundings you don't. Maybe you should. Maybe everybody should. Maybe the first step in eradicating all social evils is that everybody deal with them all the time. Maybe if you were to live among filth, among people out for your blood, you'd do something about it. Maybe if you were to see what India really was like on the outside, you'd start thinking. Maybe if the Ambanis were to live in a colony where new born children died everyday for lack of nourishment, they'd rethink their plan for a new house. The Russians had a word you know, for sharing everything, good or bad. It made a lot of sense to a lot of people then.

You argue you're different. Hey, you 'liked' Anna Hazare on Facebook didn't you? You forwarded that mail to a million people. You even blogged about it. You go so far as to say you're going to donate 10% of your first salary someplace. You're modern you say. You condemn antiquated ideas and are progressive. You swear that you'll never say, 'Ladki Gori honi chahiye?' or, 'Aapko jo dena ho aap do, hum to bhayee kuch nahi maangte'. Or that you won't kill your unborn daughter in cold blood. You're doing what the nation needs you to do, aren't you? There you have me.

1.

His eyes were slowly getting accustomed to the dark. Not since the Great Blight ten years ago had such darkness crept into the valley. It had been slow at first, pretending to be harmless dark clouds that did nothing but obstruct sunlight. And then slowly night had set in, a night that was going to be eternal for all he knew. The Dark Ones had been clever this time. There was no escape, and he knew there'd be no mercy. It wasn't much use fighting either, you couldn't physically harm the Dark Ones. Each of them carried a stick of fire that glowed as bright as the sun used to. This helped him see them from afar, but he was never able to use this fact to his advantage. They always found him and then he'd get the stick...