“A fresh morning, breathe in your full and start freshly”. This is something which crops up in my mind as I wake up each day with the soothing twilight of the raising sun but with passage of time, the freshness sheds all its leaves as if autumn has arrived before spring. The same daily routine, from home to college, steaming with sweat in the blue-white mini bus with people like me I do not recognize. They seem all alike, bound to their own time, hurrying to catch the metro, the speed of escalator seems to slow compared to their running footsteps. The door of the metro is about to close. I see them howling, tumbling to get inside somehow, perhaps there is oxygen shortage outside the compartment. At last with the arrival of the unnoticed evening light as I look outside the bus window it brings an end to the ‘one day’ of my life. Well this is something I have observed for a long time, I observe time, how it creates events and destroys it. We all have bound ourselves in time, and time rules over nature. Routine is a periodic repetition of time, from home to school/workplace, which we adhere to. That is how the world runs and it has become a systematic habit for all of us to begin and end in the same way everyday. But what if we start differently, everyday learn something, know something from life and not from the century old notebooks belonging to serious professors. But that is all we can talk about, never bring it to happen in reality.
Imaginations often coincide with the empty cup of harsh reality, reality of our society. The amount of corruptions we find in the daily news papers. People run after their lives in the search of glory failing to understand its real meaning. Parents “over ambitious” forcing their children to fulfill their own personal unsatisfied dreams, children being turned to puppets have lost their creativity. Questions are never asked, they only need to get themselves answered that too in an examination which would build their future.
As I face the real world I wonder why there are so many beggars roaming in Park Street. Who had forced them to beg? Why do ‘these’ children fight with crows and dogs to snatch their share from the municipality dustbin corner? Who are ‘these’ people who sleep on the streets, half aware, aware of the police who comes at night to receive tokens from them. That is the rent they have to pay for the roads-their only shelter. This massive difference taunts me, haunts me for I can only think, talk and write about it rather than pushing myself forward to question society. Are they not a part of our society? Are they not a part of us? Who has compelled them to take shelter on streets? If fate is something which we create, then what wrong has the three month old done that dust and railway station floor has become his cradle? Why does the nine year old work with the other masons to earn his morning bread? And the greatest question rising is whom to ask for answers. It appears at the end of each day as if the questions point towards me since I too am a part of the society.
67 years had passed that our country had gained independence. Every year on 15th August we celebrate this day in the memory of the great martyrs who sacrificed their lives for an independent India. A wave of valour, enthusiasm blows over our heart with the flying ‘ tiranga’ rising beyond the horizon of the sun. Just wonder what effect does this day have on the life of ‘these’ people. Does the word ‘independence’ convey any meaning in their life? Are they really aware that they live in a country called India and they must be proud of their nationality?
Everyday as the metro stops on Shahid Khudiram station, I feel a deep urge not to land on the platform. I must trace my steps to a new route and find out more things happening. Why to follow that same old track? What happens if I do not go home just ‘one day’? What happens if I take a ‘one day’ from the contract I had signed with life – to obey the rules and regulations, to follow the daily routine like most people do. Its just a matter of ‘one day’, trace the steps to a new route, walk on a new track – a new vision of life is there to see.