Happy Independence Day Here Be Rant.
It was the eve of independence and all through the house, not a creature was moving, not even a mouse…because all the creatures in the house, man and mouse, had stepped out in the streets, some shouting loud, some others enjoying the beat. Come 15th August any year, and a ‘true red-blood Indian’ gets a power surge of patriotism and bursts into trendy slogans celebrating the anniversary of our Independence. After four years, I am back in Ahmedabad on this day and last night, as the clock struck twelve and India awoke for its tryst with destiny, I was walking down the streets, coming home from the Flood Relief Office set up near home. Most of the work that can be done for the flood victims of Surat, from a distance, is done. More than 200 thousand people were stranded on roof tops and in high level buildings for more than three days without adequate food or water. Those who were ill, died. Those who were healthy, suffered. Nothing was safe; nothing sacred. Seven days of flash floods, the entire city on the verge of multiple epidemics and the people still in shock over the apathy of the State’s planning and rehabilitation later, it is the 60th Indian Independence day and the state of Gujarat is lying through its teeth over the steps taken to help the Suratis on their feet. More than 21,000 crores of loss (let us not even talk about the death toll at 234 and rising) and an entire city in shambles, and instead of going to the aid of the people there, the State is busy organizing the Vibrant Gujarat festival on the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project that successfully evacuated 40,000 people from their settlements for the cause of building IT infrastructure and for beautifying the riverfront. Happy Independence day.

I walk down the bridge and I see a press of people working on building heavy sets and rehearsing for the Vibrant Gujarat festivities – it is going to cost the exchequer 12 crore rupees for it. There are shouts and screams and shrieks of merriment and joy, of laughter and extravagance, of indulgence and celebrations…and in my ears they ring as death tolls of a citizenry and state dancing on the graves, throwing everything to the winds; fey. A little more and there are five policemen who stop me. The silence of the stop is remarkable. They are no longer the friendly cops who have often stopped me before on my late night jamborees and genially asked me to be safe and walk carefully. These are grim faced officials who are desperately hoping for the kill – literally. I am frisked, my cell phone is checked and I am questioned for ten minutes as to what I do, where I am coming from, where I am going, why am I out so late in the night, and what is my religion. After ten minutes of questioning, they ask for an ID proof. I fish out my election voting card. They note the address in a small tattered book and make me sign there. Just in case there is a blast in that area that I was walking through, they will come knocking at my doors for alibis about my whereabouts and my ‘foreign’ connections. I got off easy, one of the smaller cops who I have known as my senior in college, told me. It would have been worse if I had been a Muslim. Apparently they have taken eight Muslim men in ‘protective custody’ because they were out after eleven in the night, on a public road. Happy Independence Day.

I leave the sad aftertaste of the frisking and the questioning behind me, marveling, as I usually do, at the city in the night – silent, satiated, like a post-coital lover smoking an occasional cigarette of happy contentment. Ahmedabad at night is serene. The roads are clean and gleaming, the plants have all been watered. The only company you generally find is an irregular car zooming away or the gatekeepers outside all the banks and buildings, dozing comfortably in their red and white vinyl chairs. But as I near C.G. Road – the largest shopping paradise that stretches across four Kilometers, there is a tsunami of sound that comes and wipes me off my feet. I can recognize strains of popular musical toppers in the air. There are cars and bikes- blurs of three colours, passing me by. There is a huge throng of people out on the streets, having an independence day party. I walk by hotels and restaurants which are hosting an Independence Eve dance party and bashes, discounts and offers. People are waiting for the countdown to begin on a large electronic dial that shows the approaching hour. In the sea of multi coloured tops and denims, one could see the khakhi of the police uniform present in grim firmness. There are sequins, illegally smuggled beer, loud shouts and Himesh Reshammiya numbers flowing through the air. This is the crème-de-la-crème of Ahmedabad’s moneyed many. The dollared darlings who wish to fly off the USA asap so that they can live their lives in White splendour and big bucks. But today they are patriotic and dancing because they have the freedom to dance. The freedom to dance. What else can one ask for? Happy Independence Day.

I pass through the throngs, clearly not fitting, inviting many side glances in my crumpled khadi kurta, in my tired and longing for bed mode after fourteen years of packing food packets and preparing relief packs, in my apparent lack of jubilation and festivity. With a sense of subdued and misdirected apology I clear the crowds and walk home. I meet young brother at the gates of the society. He is perched on a ladder and folding up the national flag for the flag hoisting to happen in the morning. He is surrounded by a few more boys and girls who are silent, somber – two of them lost a cousin in the floods; one more has relatives from Surat who have fled the city after the water receded, living in his home. All of them have worked at the Relief Camp from where I was returning. They are old enough to know the paradox of laughing at a funeral pyre or a watery grave. At 19-20, they are idealist enough to be cynical about life. I give them a smile. A couple of them come and ask me if they will be needed at the Camp tomorrow. They have a two day holiday. They are free if their help is needed. I shake my head and ask them to rest for a couple of days. I have their cell phone numbers to call if need be. They ask me to do it any time of the day or night. I smile at them and pass by. Happy Independence Day.

The walk from the gate to my flat is short. About three minutes worth of song or something. On the left is the Bungalow of the rich industrialist who has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it. His compound wall is draped with delicious bougainvillea and some other white and orange flowers I do not recognize. I see his garden brilliantly lit tonight and soft strains of Hindustani Classical music spilling into the air. There is subdued laughter and an occasional tinkle of the glass. I remembered that it is his 18 year old daughter’s birthday today. And like every other year, they have thrown a midnight birthday party for her. There will be booze and dancing into the wee hours with a select guest list. You can be sure none of them is anything but a Hindu. It is the same man, who, during the Godhra riots, had threatened my father when he learnt that there were three Muslim families seeking shelter in our house. In his party, in the sanctum of his palatial house, there can be no non-Hindu sullying his doorsteps. There was a loud squeal of laughter and the unmistakable sounds of the cake cutting ceremony and people singing “Happy Birthday to you” in unharmonious tunes. Happy Independence Day.

On the right, the new Residency is being constructed. The labourers are all living on the premises with their families right now. Three wide eyed children have climbed the tops of precarious walls to see what is happening in the gardens beyond the walls that keep them out. I recognize one of the child as the girl who had asked me, two months ago, what a mango tastes like, when the fruit wallah had come with his usual hoard of fruits and announcing his wares, keeping a handy stick to whip these children away if they come too near. I had gone home, collected every fruit in the house and gone to them and distributed them among the children. They had all jumped with joy and made apish noises wielding the fruits like exotic weapons and giving lout war cries of surprised delight as they bit into these wonderous things. Mum had come back from teaching to find the house completely denuded of the fruits. She had laughed when I told her the story. She had also made sure that the five children who live there, get their weekly supply of fruits for as long as they are there. The girl waves tentatively at me and gives me a smile. She is eight. She doesn’t go to school. She speaks falteringly. She works twelve hours a day, carting potfuls of cement up and down the half constructed building. She looks with wide eyes at the imagined scenes of merrymaking on the other side of the wall. I wave at her and plod home. Happy Independence Day.

This morning, I wake up early and am at the society gates again. It is seven in the morning. Time for the flag hoisting. There is a silence that is uncanny. When I reach there, all I see is nine people. Nine people out of 300 living in the flats. Five of them are the boys who were putting up the flag last night. The old uncle who knows my grandfather from their imprisoned in independence days and has worked with Gandhi, has managed to fight his rheumatism and has come to be there to unfurl the flag. The old woman who we all know as ‘Ba’ and who hands out peppermints to all the children who can answer her questions on Indian history, is also there. The newly parent couple in the house next door, are present with their three month old daughter wrapped up in pink and green on the cold and humid day. We wait for ten more minutes for people to turn up. Nobody does. The unfurling happens and the nine of us sing the national anthem and walk up. In the various houses there are loud TV noises making their presence felt. Bro and his friends are discussing how most of the younger people came really late in the night from the independence day bashes and hence couldn’t make it to the flag hoisting- maybe they should have kept it at a later hour. Somewhere, somebody is playing A.R. Rehman’s rendition of ‘Vande Matram’ at full volume. Somewhere else, a mother is calling the family for breakfast. I open the house, come to my bedroom and sleep the rest of the morning. The freedom to sleep on a holiday. Happy Independence Day.