So what’s the plan this year?

It’s independence day.
It’s a day off.
A time to celebrate, just like any other day…
I know I hate it too when we get a national day off during weekends…
What to do? We have too many such days and events in our yearly calender and the list now is just too endearing.

So what have you decided this year?

Like last year watch lots of theme based shows on all national TV, Surf a lot on your remote, take off with your family to a restaurant for a nice and sumptuous lunch followed by some shopping

God, aren’t we tired of doing the same old thing over and again?

I mean we have one and what are we doing with it?

Independence has become such a clichéd word now!
We use it over and again and abuse it to the max…

What have we done within us and around having got any independence?
Can you name one thing that you feel you have done worthwhile using the independence that you have got today?

Go to a school… you’ll find teachers teaching the same old history, geography etc etc. Our kids are expected to know the date when Gandhiji started the Dandi march and broke the salt act or whatever it was for whatever the cause. I mean it’s all good. Really good to know but who gives a damn if the date is mentioned wrongly by the student? 1 mark gone. Someone wrote it correctly. Someone wrote it wrong. Our Indian curriculum expects you to score full marks even with that God forsaken correct date. But no one cares to tell or ask students to think what if that particular incident didn’t happen? Or maybe a scenario where you alter the possibilities and allow kids to come up with their own analysis on a given situation. Don’t you think that would make the kid go through pages in history, understand the facts and then arrive at their own inferences? No wonder, most of us are so bad when it comes to knowing what happened during those times… our past.. our history…. No wonder we are still harvesting book worms rather than brains that is most desparately needed in these competitive times.

Come home, a parent expects kids to be someone. Some person.
Doctor, Engineers are the most common of all. Kids are not supposed to be what they want to be. They are supposed to be what their parents want them to be.
Do we watch what our kid is doing intently? Maybe a drawing, reading, narrating, reciting or anything that lets a spark and makes you think “Hey I guess my kid could become a good musician?”
But no! We immediately assign a price tag to their dreams.
“Nah, it’s too cheap”
“No scope in that”
“Not another AR Rahman”
“You will only end up running here and there”

How many times have we dismissed our kids right to their dreams?
How rare have we followed it?
To make it even worse, we rave about our neighbour’s kid having too ambitious dreams and on the contrary shoo our own kid’s thoughts!

Have we ever aimed our kids to be the most prolific writer in the world, or maybe a scientist or even a cricketer like Sachin Tendulkar?

Why are we so stuck to some basic achievable dreams that suit our pockets more than the eyes and hearts of our kids?

Why shouldn’t we aim higher?
Why should we shy away from those dreams?
Do we think those dreams are smaller?

I am yet to see a kid of today who knows what he wants to become when he grows up. Whatever he/ she says its all a sound box relayed from their parents rather than their own.

So what true independence have we all achieved if we haven’t given that basic requirement to our children when it comes to their future?

What’s the point in celebrating it when we don’t know to use it fully?
Only that day will be the day we finally get our independence. Until then it is all the same except that we are the oppressors and our kids the slaves.

Can we see a day when we can live the dreams that our kids want?

I would surely say yes, that day isn’t far behind. Times are changing so are our thoughts and outlook towards life.

Let’s give what we didn’t get. Let’s make our children what we couldn’t achieve.

Happy Independence day!