Yesterday, i was watching NDTV. 76% of Mumbaikars thought Mumbai is for everyone !! But that also meant 25 % felt otherwise or did not feel so! I felt pained. A deep & distinct pain.
Many years ago we had a prayer in school. A poem by Rabindranath Tagore. Everyday morning we use to sing it. It didnt make much sense back then.
“Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
Now it does. Big time.
Here we are, talking about the world becoming a small place. About how borders between countries are getting irrelevant.
It seems to me our minds are becoming even smaller and that the barbed wires in some of our minds are becoming sharper. When will we awake ?
Kavi,
You become awake only when you abolish the so calles casteism, religion and accept all humans as one. Do we? Within India its always a matter of east/ west. N/S right. Where does the integrity comes in when ppl are selfish of their own state, community and self.
Ho ppl’ will not change even if they have to coz, ther is always a fanatic group rising the other side to balance it.
really painful…sigh
That does not lead to a united nation! some shouting in the crowd must stop and think on his own why he is shouting.
one of my absolute favorite poems.
it is a sad sad situation…fed by our own apathy over the years to the irrationality and evils of power politics…
Tagore was an era where we were confronted with a common evil called subjugation. today we are crippled by ignorance and fear.
when even the color of skin spells difference, when even siblings demand special treatment, when u project it into the walls of a country, they are the same everywhere. no freedom and liberty in the minds and actions of our cultured countries. we cant make the sacrifice which will kill our caste and religion and all else to become free. It wont happen. We are not America.
you know things are going real suck when one guy has the adocity to declare ‘war’ against any northie foreigners in ‘his’ city… in public…
but in the wierdest way this has everything to do with patriotism and those allied ‘good’ things. if i have been taught to take absolute pride in my ethnicity, race, religion, country or color it only goes on logically for me to hate all others. and that is exactly what we see around us today.
but if i say i dont give a damn about being tamil/ indian/ hindu/ brown/ asian or the likes i become an evil atheist wannabe bad guy!!!!
its a small world after all!!!