Dear Bharat maa,
I am an archetypal teenager. I have a weird relationship with you. There’s not much that I like about you, but there’s this strange affinity which I experience when I am standing near the tricolour. You aren’t the best, but you aren’t the worst either. When I think about you, I feel like this pendulum swaying across two ends of a clock. I don’t think I’m emotional about you, but I think I certainly feel sentimental about you. Thinking about you is like taking a walk in a bazaar of feelings and purchasing the contradictory sentiments. You’re everything I don’t want, but everything I need. You are unique, exceptional and someone who inspires me. You aren’t perfect; I’m sure of that. But then, who is? Perfection is utopian, and imperfection is reality.
You know what? If life were a box of sweets, then you would be the bright, yellow, round boondi ka ladoo which stands out from the quintessential, dull, brown pieces of chocolate. You are exciting. You are colours. You are the lights. You are the shiny blue, pink, yellow, orange, green and red which paint the dull, transparent air on the auspicious day of Holi. You are each little Diya which lights up the subdued sky, which is sombre from its routine of conventionality. You are immortal. You are each colourful Indian movie which plays on the gloomy white screen. You are each extravagant dance sequence which is the heart and soul of your films. You are each Mehbooba, Chammak Challo, Mogambo, Gabbar, Bahubali, Mr India and Anarkali who graces the white screen with her/his evergreen spirit. You are the spirit of every icchadari naagin or saas-bahu drama. You aren’t Jungkook or Justin Bieber, but you are Jagjit Singh and Lata Mangeshkar. You aren’t Sherlock Holmes, but you are Byomkesh Bakshi. You aren’t the sophisticated Ratatoullie or Croissant, but you are certainly sarson da saag and pav bhaji. You don’t speak French or German, but you speak 200 other languages. You don’t win 120 gold medals, but you win 125 crore hearts. You don’t have the fancy Colosseum or the tall Eiffel Tower, but Hampi and Taj Mahal are a part of your heart. You don’t have Neverland concerts, but you have the grand Kumbh Mela. You don’t have the fastest typing ability in the world, but you do have the largest postal network. You don’t exactly have the best farming technologies, but I bet nothing can beat the hal and bailgaadis(bullock carts) which you have. You aren’t the tragic Sylvia Plath or the naturalistic William Wordsworth, but you are the melodious Rabindranath Tagore and the nightingale Sarojini Naidu. You aren’t John Green or J.K. Rowling, but you are Amish Tripathi and RK Narayan. You aren’t hip-hop or salsa, but you are the serene Kathak and energetic Garba.
But unfortunately, that’s not all you are. Your people rape numerous girls every day. Your people troll celebrities on any minuscule matter. They spit on your streets and walls. They are the imaginary Shaktimaan who never puts a seatbelt or wears a helmet. They throw diapers on the beachside, and polythene bags on the roads. They kill their sons and daughters who wish to go against others and try to do something new. You are the mother of the corrupt politicians who dupe poor and needy people. You are a mother of the rich who spends their money without any caution, and also the poor who lives in terrible slums. Your people are decoloring the Taj Mahal, or polluting air in Delhi filled. You are responsible for the floods in Kerala, and the drought in Maharashtra. Your people need to stop. Just stop and think about what they are doing to you. You should learn to love and accept yourself. Learn to learn from your past. Learn to go back to who you were and who you ought to be. I need you to be you because if you aren’t you, I won’t be me. So, for my sake, please give yourself some time, and come back to who you were, O my dear mother.