As a people , we were no less patriotic when we did not fly the tiranga outside our homes . No one wore their patriotism on their sleeve . No one needed to proclaim in loud, sometimes strident, sometimes aggressive, sometimes truculent tones that one is a patriot . No one needed to be asked whether they loved their motherland. We all did, and we were secure in the knowledge that our compatriots did too. What has changed now ? Why have we become insecure ?
Or is the Har Ghar Tiranga ( and similar spectacles) a manifestation of the contemporary phenomenon of everyone proclaiming their love for their parents, children, spouses, friends, teachers, co workers and , of course, the nation , on social media, as if it needed to be publicly said or to be publicly applauded and validated .
I have been guilty of it myself, sharing on Facebook the poems I wrote on my sons' birthdays or my husband's. I can advance the defence that the posts were meant to be read only by my family and friends who were also my FB friends. I did not have a wide audience. Also, what I was sharing was not so much the sentiment as the artistic endeavour ---- the poem that I had so enjoyed writing because the words gushed forth, of their own, requiring little or no effort to be strung together.
But it is a weak defence. I can not deny that I enjoyed the compliments, whether they were directed at the poem or at the photographs that I shared along with the poem. Possibly, that is why I chose social media to tell my children and my husband of my love for them. It was more about me than it was about the love that was proclaimed or its object.
Such public proclamations aren't needed, are they ?
We need only tell those whom we love that we love them. The whole world need not be told. More importantly, we most often speak to the people we love through our actions. We wake up early to cook them their favourite breakfasts or hold their hand when they stand at the edge of the road, too scared to cross. We Google reference material for them when an assignment deadline looms large and the work is incomplete, and we accompany them for health check ups. We lovingly listen to the story that has been related a dozen times before, and we brace ourselves without visibly wincing when they choose to play loud music. We let them bring street dogs home , and we uncomplainingly get out of bed at 2 am to make tea because they have to stay up all night, preparing for the exam the next day. We laugh at their jokes, we weep when they suffer, we wipe their tears and sometimes lend them a shoulder to cry on. That's how they know they are loved.
The many ways in which we can speak to our motherland of our love are as numerous as they are simple.
Every street, every neighbourhood has its share of potholes, non functioning street lights, blocked storm drains, barren soil, plastic heaps, stray cows and dogs, wrongly parked vehicles and road side vendors. Demand from the municipal authorities that they fix the potholes. Agitate for functioning street lights. Get the storm water drains cleared. Do you see the depleted soil in the road medians ? Get together with a few friends and neighbours, begin adding compost that slowly strengthens the soil. Compost your kitchen waste. If you lack space, ask your RWA to set up a community compost plant. Segregate plastic and paper and ensure that it enters the recycling chain. Stop throwing plastic sachets and wrappers and single use bags on the roadside. Are the trees on the verge getting suffocated by concrete ? Ask the district forest department to get them de concretised. Stop parking your cars outside designates parking areas. Stop honking the horn. Why are you always in such a mad rush ? Leave for school/college/office 15 minutes earlier. Better still, demand public transport.
We depend upon road side vendors for fruits and vegetables, flowers and corn on cob. The makeshift tailoring arrangement is where we get clothes altered/repaired. The mochi is where we get shoes and bags and jackets repaired. talk to them. Get to know of the harassment they face at the hands of multiple government agencies. Help them earn their livelihoods with dignity.
Does your domestic help have medical insurance ? Can they be helped to subscribe to a pension scheme ?
The dhobi may have set up his makeshift table beneath a tree. Does he not suffer when the summer sun is unbearably hot or the winter winds are biting cold ? Help him make a better arrangement.
This isn't even a millionth part of the long, long, perhaps unending , list of the actions that speak of our love for our motherland.
Why would we elect instead to fly crores of tirangas, most of which , being plastic, will end up in garbage heaps and landfills and pollute our soil and water ? Perhaps this is the least inconvenient option, asking for very little effort, and with the advantage of letting us post Instagram selfies and garnering appreciative comments from others like us. It achieves little, though much noise is made. The shreds of guilt that we may feel for leading self centred lives and never expanding the circle of our concern to include the wider community drown in the din, and we happily get on with our lives, enveloped in the soft glow of social media approval.
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