Freedom and all that jazz

Sanjeevaiah Park, Secunderabad

When I was in the ninth grade, I won the second prize in a short story writing competition. I fashioned my story in the realist style of R K Narayan combined with the cinematic sensibility of Shyam Benegal who had just punctured our urban development myth with the explosive Ankur, and its images of a persistent feudalism and class oppression. Perhaps it was telling that the first place went to a sweet, hopeful story about a lost-and-found pet and my own somewhat cynical narrative about a young woman and her alcoholic husband was an uncomfortable second. Or maybe the good nuns of St Ann's Convent thought I was writing a tad above my station--as a 14-year-old.

My fiction unfolded on Independence Day--India's 17th--and its underlying point was that we were a long way from having achieved freedom for all. Granted, it was an unsophisticated, somewhat naive treatment of the kind of plot that is not uncommon in both commercial and literary fiction, but it was deeply felt, and at its core was the beginnings of a disenchantment with the rhetoric and reality of nation building.

My politics haven't changed much in the forty-years since (gosh has it been that long?). I might write that story with more nuance, less black and white and more grey and even some glimmer of color, because as one grows older one also learns to see hope and happiness in small acts and tiny corners, and take joy in the moment (and the momentary).

Still, I can't not be a bit irritated each year when the 15th of August comes around and we find ourselves subjected to all manner of lofty claims about progress and whatnot by whichever government is currently in power. Don't get me wrong. I too get goosebumps when I listen to our "Tryst with destiny" speech, and I too am humbled by the manner in which so many united to end colonial rule. But you don't have to look too far to see how far we have not come. And then there are all those tragedies that have dogged us in the wake of independence; they endure like a long low scream that Edward Munch would have had a hard time capturing.

I still find my refuge in writing.

August 15, 2017

What exactly are we celebrating?

The various impunities made available, like candy 
at our Made-in-India vending machines?

Freedom to turn personal frustrations into public hatred?

Freedom to allow babies to die, un-breathing,
because you/they wouldn't/couldn't 
pay for air?

Freedom to change words in textbooks
and remake histories in some singular,
monolithic image?

Freedom to spread hate in the name 
of some version of love (so you say)
for that completely unnecessary thing called Nation?

Freedom to draw boundaries around notions
of personhood, being, loving, even 
living?

I can list enough of these...these freedoms
to fill the 70 pages of your
new history books

That turn wondering children
into accepting, repeating automatons,
better to work the algorithmic gears
of this unconstitutional republic.

As far as I can see, you've used up
all the Freedom.

And now, you're selling it back to us
in byte-sized plastic tirangas

that we are free 
to buy
with the spare change left to us;

relics 
of a demonetized economy.