Yeh Azadi Kya Hai - on India's 60 Years of Independence

The celebration is on and right before the day's mid-night sun.

And there is so much gung-ho as ever. Right in the nick of the moment and in right earnest. With flying colours and with much fanfare, razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle for nothing.

And with blaring of conchs and mouthful of words.

And with riot of colours it says so many sweet-nothings.

It is 60 years' old but is yet to come of age.

60 years but not come of age?

Actually it is over-aged but yet not come of age. That is, it is aged or over-aged in figures but not in spirits. The spirit is full of beans. And that is all for nothing

What is there if it is still going on all fours?

Going on all fours is the index of its true face, the baby-faced facade of its 60 years' encumbering is all too evident in the annals of its naive amnesia.

How amnesiac its patrons and guardians are!

Yes, they have buried everything into oblivion to salvage their well-earned salvation. They have forgotten the days of 1975 when the holy cow was solemnly sacrificed at the behest of the Almighty and the bleary-eyed ghost-writers kowtowed at the altar of omnipotence to save her face with white hair-line and to reinforce her cathedral by scripting a new manifesto of songs of freedom.

It is witchcraft and witch-hunting.

The sacred river was strewn with skull and bones. The insipid potion gradually turned gray with the tears of Auswisch.

Nobody bombed for the fear of freedom.

And nobody dared to bare his/her presence.

And culture of silence hit the rooftop in cahoots with more somber silence.

All the Goebels fell to talking tongue-in-cheek with open-chested breast-stroke of machismo.

History is to be glossed over, history is to be forsaken in the brown pages of history. The pages are all too tattered. The humbugs say.

But history repeats itself. In both tragedy and comedy.

And comedy of errors enacted repeatedly. By the old campaigners time and again.

Now again the same ghost-writers are acting like animals of the Animal Farm crying themselves hoarse to glorify the songs of freedom for the same fear of freedom. Was '1984' a comedy of blunders? Who dare say?

The songs of freedom are splattered always all over with profusion of blood and sweat, the dins and bustles are spilling over as usual as though they are racing one against another to show the world who is more equal than the others to be qualified for the olive branch in the Olympiad.

But they have forgotten that the 60 years' toddler has failed to deliver the goods at the fair-price shop for those millions who are shedding bloods and sweats at the sweat-shops in excruciating diurnal drudgery.

What is that to them?

Nothing and nothing whatsoever to the bootleggers. Or, carpetbaggers?

They only know how to get paid in their own coins.

Moolah, soft doughnut moolah. Very pricey.

Everything dies. Only callous cash nexus remains good for good.

The sweat-shoppers do not know how to sing songs of freedom or cry for freedom.

The street-children do not know how to dance in tune with the songs of freedom.

They just ask silently.

They ask violently in deafening silence with cymbals in their hands. Reggae it is!

Yeh Ajadi Kya Hai? Jhuta Hai Ya Sach Hai?

What is this freedom as such? True or false?

Who knows.