FREEDOM TO LIVE .

       
     A highly objectionable tweet / status / comment in a social networking site has prompted me to write this small para about what freedom means to me, earned through the ages of incessant fights, angst, revolt, struggle by thousands of courageous leaders who did not flinch even before the roar of bullets.

A salute to all the great countrymen, the fruits of whose efforts make me roam and wander anywhere in the country inspite of the debacles due to religious issues, corruption in politics, turbulent economics, disorder in budgeting (soon tomatoes & onions will be kept in lockers to ensure maids have no access).

Well the status mentioned above which put me aghast reads(roughly stating) “there are more big things than INDIA”…..I am shocked. This slack comment, still not sure on what context an Indian can comment like this. Isn’t it insulting the valiant efforts put together by many brave heroes? Isn’t it rebuking my country so publically?

Hope this youngster brimming with energy and enthusiasm was unknowingly in a fractious loose moment whiffed this statement and am sure he don’t mean it.

My friend X, over a cup of coffee narrated an incident which lingered in my subconscience since. She, married to an army officer, right after her two months of matrimony was subjected to a quirk of fate - The Kargil war. Her husband was to get deployed in one of the fiercely fighting locales in an effort to regain the lost glory of our country. He woefully explains the situation to the new bride.

Husband:      U should show some courage, the situation is worsening, they need me, I need to act, and my courage is your support. Though nothing can stop me from going, I don’t want to see you wretched .Tell me, it’s your call you want to have a baby, whose father might not return, or you have an option to forget and forgive me and have another man and a wonderful life,sweetheart.

What went through this lady’s mind.

I am sure she was lacerated and bleeding a hundred wounds inside. She would have wanted to growl on those morons who brought a war and teared her yet to germinate marital bliss. An ember of fire in her brain, if I say yes to a baby, may be the war will usurp a father from the child, if I say yes to the second option; I am no less of a coward, a virtue far to be inherited by an army wife. Held in piteous, unnerved times she dolefully remembers the testing time of her nubile life. She was in complete thrall to all these nightmares of the brutality a war could bring.

Freedom to talk, freedom to share thoughts, freedom to walk the streets, freedom to send children to school, freedom to trade ,freedom to travel across,  freedom to work…what more; freedom to live can be ENDED, if a WAR happens.

There will be only pain; mournful cries of hunger, famine, riot, arson, bloodshed, suicides, and fratricides….you want it to happen? (Oh dear brother..Tweeter).If there are big things than INDIA, well you, we, us all should be alive safe and healthy to tweet this. For that say thanks to the hundred thousand officers and jawans of the armed forces who’s sleepless nights, food less fights, gallant actions amidst bullets and bombs whining past them and at times through their skulls has bought us this free will to live.

The wife finally decides,

 Wife: I want to have a baby. I want to tell him, how courageous his dad was. How much of a patriotic he was. And if the almighty wish you will be back to tell the story lives yourself.

Today I salute all the courageous leaders who fought for my INDIA and brought us laurels.

“HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY” to all fellow INDIANS.

About my friend X,

Her husband a triumphant winner joins us at the fag end of the coffee session giving his able shoulder for his sweetheart to weep on.And their son gets back from play to remind them of a wonderful decision taken.