Friday, August 16, 2002
So, yesterday was Independence Day. Best thing about it was that it was a holiday. (You see having been a dot com journalist for the last three years, I have had to drag my arse to office on every national holiday, while the rest of the country slept, watched TV, made love…)
Tidied up my room (just in time it seems, because a couple of days more and I would have found it difficult to make my way through the heaps of soiled underwear, snot-soaked handkerchiefs, discarded bus tickets, cigarette butts and other detritus of a bachelor’s pad). Also got a much-needed haircut (every time the barber goes to work on my hair I can’t help noticing the receding hairline).
Somehow, Independence Day in India doesn’t seem to evoke the kind of response that Fourth of July evokes in the US. Come on man, I-Day should be a national festival like Thanksgiving. People should celebrate it like any other festival. I had read somewhere that Indians don’t have a common festival which is celebrated nationwide which is why we fail to bond as a nation.
The government should market it like Archies markets Valentine’s Day. I mean this day should mean SOMETHING BIG to us, rather than just another day before which you line up at the local liquor shop to tide over a government-imposed dry day.
Hey come on, did all the freedom fighters die fighting the Brits so that we assholes get one more excuse to get pissed drunk?
Anyway, I will stop before I work myself up into this patriotic hysteria.
But, I very strongly feel Independence Day should be celebrated big time by all Indians.
The fact that the government has allowed the common man to put up the national flag seems like a good start.
Tidied up my room (just in time it seems, because a couple of days more and I would have found it difficult to make my way through the heaps of soiled underwear, snot-soaked handkerchiefs, discarded bus tickets, cigarette butts and other detritus of a bachelor’s pad). Also got a much-needed haircut (every time the barber goes to work on my hair I can’t help noticing the receding hairline).
Somehow, Independence Day in India doesn’t seem to evoke the kind of response that Fourth of July evokes in the US. Come on man, I-Day should be a national festival like Thanksgiving. People should celebrate it like any other festival. I had read somewhere that Indians don’t have a common festival which is celebrated nationwide which is why we fail to bond as a nation.
The government should market it like Archies markets Valentine’s Day. I mean this day should mean SOMETHING BIG to us, rather than just another day before which you line up at the local liquor shop to tide over a government-imposed dry day.
Hey come on, did all the freedom fighters die fighting the Brits so that we assholes get one more excuse to get pissed drunk?
Anyway, I will stop before I work myself up into this patriotic hysteria.
But, I very strongly feel Independence Day should be celebrated big time by all Indians.
The fact that the government has allowed the common man to put up the national flag seems like a good start.
