Independence Day

by Shivangi Ramachandran – University of Oregon

I am super patriotic for someone who claims to care about absolutely nothing.

I wasn’t always this way though. While I was growing up, I was mostly oblivious to the surroundings I was growing up in. Like every other child, I considered my bhutta-eating, carnatic-music learning, elephant-headed god praying life to be the norm. I thought every child grew up that way, so I never really paid attention to the dusty pot-filled roads, the beggars on the streets and the cotton salwar kameezes of my younger days.

My family on the other hand has always been pretty patriotic. When mom was around, we used to get up early both on Republic day and Independence day, after tea in bed (mmm!). After which, we’d glue ourselves to the television and wait eagerly for the parade or the hoisting of the flag with my dad giving us non-stop commentary in the background.

I grew up unfortunately and since the “growing up” set in, I’ve pretty much spent it the same way – treating every August 15th as extra 24 hours I had in hand away from school, which I usually spent sleeping and/or sitting online.

Then I moved to the “US”, became part of the “diaspora’ that Karan Johar targets with his bollywood films and started lapping every “Indian-ness” that came my way.

I spent August 15^th, last year, driving around in a car and inwardly marvelling at how beautiful and awesome and amazing and what not my country was. Sometime during the day, my friends and I stopped to pick up another friend. While waiting for her to show up, I sat in my friends posh, air-conditioned, guns and roses playing car. While waiting, I rolled myself a cigarette, stepped outside the car to smoke and to wait.
Everything suddenly changed.

The guns and Roses got lost somewhere between ugly car horns and sirens. The cool comfort of the car was now replaced by sweltering humid heat. The sun that looked comfortable behind my shaded glasses, was now glaring at me. I stared at the ground that was caked with mud and dirt littered with a number of used paper plates. There was apparently a gathering for the celebration of Independence day here.

And then I saw it – somewhere in between the layers of dirt and broken paper plates, lay hundreds of tiny plastic Indian flags.

I stared at them, the smoke that I had rolled inside my comfortable car blurring my vision a little. I picked up the ones closest to me and tied them to the fence of the park we stood next to. The flags looked battered and bruised.

I stepped back into the car, disturbed. I started to pay attention to the things around me. The old bent-backed painfully thin beggar the stopped outside my window and stared at me with clear brown eyes and asked me if I had any spared money. I looked around me and noticed the clothes and the movie tickets and the cigarettes that I had spent my spare money on and shook my head. The same beggar smiled in understanding and shuffled around to the next car.

I walked through the day, feeling like my blinders had been removed. I hated it. I suddenly started disliking the country that had come to define my complete existence.

I went home that day in a cycle rickshaw. The cycle rickshaw stopped at that usual red light right outside my house. I waited patiently for the red light to turn green, while all these thoughts that I had accumulated throughout the day ran through my head.

That’s when I saw her.

There’s this 15-16 year old girl who works that red light. I see her every time I pass that light, whether I’m in a car, an auto or a cycle rickshaw – she’s always there. She used to come and ask me for money every time I was there and slowly, over time, we’d manage to build a rapport… a friendly banter between us. She always came over when she saw me, even though I most often than not, didn’t have much money to give her. This time, again, she came over with a big grin on her face.

“Oh didi, today you look exactly like Bipashu Basu! Aap toh heroine jaisi lag rahi hain (you look like a herione today)!”

Every conversation with her started out that way. One day I was Kareena Kapoor, another day I was Bipasha Basu. All of these women were 5’10 and probably size zeroes.. so, erhm, she wasn’t very accurate.

I cracked a smile.

“Arre yaar, sachi mein aaj kuch nahin hai dene ke liye(I really don’t have anything today to give you.)” I told her.

She looked at me closely.

“Woh theekh hain. Magar aap theekh ho na? (That’s alright. Are you okay though?)”

I laughed. “Haan, mein theekh ho. (Really, I’m okay)”

She watched me for a bit smiling at me.

“Arre, didi. Aap pareshan mat hoye. Bhagwan, na, sab theekh kar deta hai! (Oh, Don’t worry. God makes everything okay.)”

I smiled at her and nodded, my heart suddenly feeling a thousand times lighter.

“Acha, chalti hoon.” (Okay, I’m going to go now.) she said.

Then she stopped and looked at me, the grin on her face growing wide.

“Aur, sacchi mein aap na aaj Bipasha Basu lag rahi hai!(And honestly, today you look like Bipasha Basu!)” she giggled and then skipped over to the next car.

I laughed out loud as I watched as she walked over to the next car, holding her friends hand and her voice rang clearly as she spoke to the woman in the car.

“Aapko pata hai ki aap aaj Aishwarya Rai jaisi lag rahi hai? (Do you know you look like Aishwarya Rai today?)”

The red light turned green and the cars started moving. I turned my head back to look at the girl.

She sat on the side of the road her hands hugging her knees with other kids, just like her, crowded around her. She turned and looked at the passing cars and just for a moment, her eyes met mine and we smiled at each other.

And then it all made sense.

If you looked at the picture that I saw that day sitting in my cycle rickshaw, you would see chaos. You would see the cars on the road, the farmers herding their cows, the beggars working the street and all those tiny Indian flags buried under the footsteps of all those people.

But if you really, really watched closely, you’d be able to see the tiny spark of hope and strength in all of those things. The hope and strength that made me keep coming back – the hope that let people of a country like ours keep dreaming and the strength that kept one billion of us living together no matter how many differences we found.

And it was all in that beautiful, beautiful chaos I call home.