I Am NOT Anna.. I Am ME!!

"True bliss does not come from outside, it comes from inside, from serving the people."
- Anna Hazare

Reaching into the heart of any one person is hard enough a task to do these days. People are so deceitful, corrupted and shamelessly vile. And anybody who is able to reach out to the masses has my immense respect. It is tough these days to build a voice of your own, and have your opinions be heard and be quoted. Be identified and agreed upon.  We rarely find anybody these days who actually thinks what he says and actually mean what he says. Everybody has their own agenda. Everybody has their own little propaganda to fulfill. Everybody twists and twirls his own words for what seemingly is the greater good, his good. It would be utterly stupid of us if we blindly follow anybody’s footsteps if we aren’t sure where they are going to lead us personally. Is this future that they are promising us, really that good. Can anyone in today’s day and age be such a visionary to bring us, a nation of more than a billion people, all collectively to a brighter tomorrow??

All this is too good to be true….

We as a nation are still largely under the spell of the Wise Old Man in white khaddar. Mr. M. K. Gandhi and his comrades cast it on us during the Raj. And it’s been so ever since. Don’t get me wrong, I really am eternally grateful for them for giving us the freedom to live as we wish, unbounded to anyone. But as  much as I relish in the joys of my independence, I also am disheartened at the price that we are all paying till this day. We have been intoxicated with the prospect of not thinking for ourselves. We have become addict to the very notion of the Wise Old Man on the television being capable of knowing what is best for us and making decisions on our behalf. There hasn’t been a single Wise Young Man who has had the mass’s attention so single-handedly and unquestionably like him, and by the looks of it never will. People are mesmerized by what these knowledgeable aged souls have to say. This person knows all the answer. Age bring experiences, which in turn imparts precious wisdom. Yes, I know that. But does that mean the young are dumb? Don’t we know what is right and what is not? What about our principles? What about our individuality?!

I am not saying that Mr. Hazare and his team-mates are conspiring against the nation as a whole. It’s the whole other way around. I completely back his Anti-Corruption campaign. His Jan Lokpal Bill is probably the best piece of legislation that has come onto the Parliament floor in ages. But what has really disheartened me is the sight of our countrymen repeatedly giving in to following their lead. Never being the leaders. And if somebody desires to be the leader, he needs to wait till he is bald, aged and has preferably started losing some of his teeth to be taken seriously. That is his quintessential qualification for the nation to listen to what he has got to say.  Mr. Hazare has worked all his life for the betterment for the common man and has never had such immense support on the national front. And now that he has taken the ultimate plunge into the dirty swamp of high-end big budget market of Central Corruption, and that he is now one of the elite Wise Old Man club, he is heard. I am really glad to see someone actually doing something about this mess in my life time. I would have been gladder if it would have been somebody of my generation up there on the podium. At least that person would have been able to stick around to see the whole thing sail through righteously.

Corruption is bad. I know that. Most people I know, know that. But most people I know are simple day to day, common men. People who barely get by each day’s bills to be able pay bribes to any greedy greasy official. The main culprits are not us. It’s the people with pockets deep enough from where they could fish out lakhs of rupees just to lubricate a hungry bureaucrat to get their dirty work done. The ones who give the bribe are as much to blame as the ones accepting them, if not more. How do they get rich enough to buy out a whole country’s governing system? How could they even dare to bend the law in a country that boasts as being the largest and the strongest Democracy in the world? When did a handful few become so strong that they could outsmart and outnumber the honest lawmakers of this country? That’s if there are a still a few honest ones left in New Delhi.

There are a lot of questions, not limited to matters of corruption only, that we have. The whole nation would really like to get answers to these questions from the government. I would like to see them answered truthfully to the point, in no roundabout manner. And more so I wouldn’t want to wait for the next aged lion to come forth and fight a battle that is by right a battle that every countryman must fight each day single-handedly for the nation. We shouldn’t wait for someone to come open our eyes to the truth that has always been there right in front of us all this time. Our eyes must opened by our own accord. Our actions and our  words must be heard by its worth. We must have our own opinions. And we must stand by our own opinions.

Our country needs the Anna Hazares of now to get us out the mess we are presently in. But it needs more of us to come together to build its future. Stand up and let your voice be heard. And if it seems to be falling on deaf ears, RAISE YOUR VOLUME!!

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