All the details are the same except that we had elections because of the resignation of the member of the legislative assembly who has recently joined the ruling party. It was essentially a home coming for Mr. Kannappan when he went to DMK and he had vacated the seat.
Now I should tell you we were treated to the most important voter status, there are many reasons to it I shall tell you some of them. This is happening when the principal opposition party decided to boycott polls. Two, it is a chance to reaffirm the ruling party’s commitment to the voters and get a stamp of approval. As regards our constituency, it is the largest in TamilNadu and it turned out to be a great campaign unleashed by the DMK and Congress combine. We had the deputy chief minister campaign for us. We had P Chidambaram, we had Kanimozhi and lot of local leaders canvassing for the Congress candidate.
I had an exam to write in the morning session and then I just went to vote and found there was no queue at my ward and came out superfast. I have done my duty as a citizen.
I just wrote an exams gosh it really tough if you are not in school or college. And the universities think they can ask anything…well even out of the prescribed syllabi, don’t know what the Q-paper had in mind.
So now I know why the kids want the exams off and I for once add to their weight and say abolish exams!!!
After a long time literally, there was an opportunity to listen to a spiritual discourse at the temple today. Remembering the halcyon school days we were exposed to lot of Vedanta and Spiritual treatise, it was after a long time I was listening to glories of the Lord of course in pure chaste Malayalam.
It was Narayaneeyam Sapthaham going on. It was simple a delight to listen to the glories of my sweet Lord who celebrated his birthday just two days before. Of course even swine flu could not deter the celebrations. (never mind the devotees had N95 masks)
There was a beautiful part on Friendship that of Krishna and Kushela, it is said to be a meeting after almost 70 years. It was so wonderful the meeting and the after math. Kuchela walks back empty handed his heart full of joy at having met his beloved friend only to see his hutment transformed to a palace. God gives you what you want – his wife wanted material comfort not to be denied, the Lord actually does it without his friend’s knowledge.
Then there was this advent of Kali episode, when it transported me to my spiritual or ISKCON theatre days. I vividly remember that as Parikshit Maharaj, the last ruler of Bharat in Dwapara Yuga, does all in his command to stop Kali from being the next ruler.
Parikshit, incidentally is the son of Abhimanyu and Uttara, son of Arjuna and daughter of Krishna respectively. His name when translated reads the one who is tested. It is because of him that we have something called Bhagavatham.
So the last few days of Dwapara Yuga had set in and Parikshit goes on a hunting trip to the forests. He becomes thirsty and looks for a hermitage or a river nearby. He walks a few minutes to reach one hermitage. A sage was in his meditation. Parikshit goes and prostrates before him and says he needs some water to quench his thirst.
He requests the same to the sage almost three to four times, the sage being in deep meditation does not hear any of these utterances.
In a fit of rage, so unlikely that of Parikshit, he caught hold of a snake passing nearby and garlands the sage as he felt insulted. He leaves the place.
On the way back he sees a black man ready to cut the limbs of a cow. He rushes there and asks the man to stop only to find that he is Kali – the ruler of Kali Yuga. So Parikshit in a fit of rage takes the sword but Kali surrenders to Parikshit and requests him to leave him so that the Time goes as planned. Parikshit reluctantly lets him stay at four places – Slaughter Houses, Prostitution, Gambling and alcohol bars. One more place Kalki request is Gold. Parikshit accepts that being tricked to the fact that he was wearing a gold crown.
It was going through my mind as the discourse went on to discuss the means to invoke him during this Kali Yuga…
So he is still in control….except for few people who try to befriend the Lord.
(This speech was delivered to the Constituent Assembly of India in New Delhi on August 14 1947 by Jawaharlal Nehru)
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.
It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.
The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.
The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart.
Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.
To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.
The appointed day has come – the day appointed by destiny – and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.
It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!
We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.
On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the father of our nation, who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us.
We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.
Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.
We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.
The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be.
We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.
To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.
And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind [Victory to India].
So another day sorry Independence day. Not everyone is happy, it fell on a Saturday. One holiday less from the other way of looking at Jan 26 and Aug 15 and add Oct 2 to it.
Looking back I am half the age of our country more or less, and given that I was born thirty years into the free India and lived through another thirty years. Has anything changed, Yes and No.
There has been a phenomenal strides to name a few, population from just 40 odd crores to some 105 today, politicians have run the country far better than Maharajahs only that some families get elected democratically. The country boasts of superior warfare technique but a Swine flu can cause panic like hell. The country’s villages have remained villages though enough money has been earmarked every five year in a plan to loot the country.
And it took one Abhinav Bindra to take in a gold after a looooooooooooooong wait at the Olympics and guess what we ran a one year completion interview. But yeah one man had managed to be the President of Olympic Association for over two decades and no accountability on any sports. And Hockey is a nation game or sometimes its a national shame so much so that cricket has become the end all and everything India stands in sports and games.
Yesterday two news items in succession though a little time apart has caused irreparable damage to Indo Chinese relations… And they believe that it is a netizen who is responsible for all this. I am surprised how China thought it fit not to find the man responsible for this.
