By Ellerine Diengdoh
“Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
That was Tagore’s prayer. 78 years have passed, and one must wonder, is ” my country awake?”
The first sign is the flags. Yesterday, they were crisp, today, they’re slumped over, limp and rain-streaked, looking as exhausted as the rest of us. The great national party is over, leaving behind the quiet, awkward morning-after. The great freedom hangover.
Last week, everyone was very excited about being free. To show how free we were, we put little flags on our cars and our bikes and scooties. The main point of the day was to celebrate being free to go anywhere, so we all went to the same place, at the same time. Which meant no one could go anywhere…..we were all stuck…..in a jam. Is that what we mean by a ‘freedom jam’? It is the ultimate freedom paradox, being collectively free to be individually stuck.
Now the flags on the cars look a bit sad and droopy, like they’ve just been told some bad news, and I’m left with questions….what did we actually celebrate again?
I was reading a newspaper someone had used to wrap their momos in, it told a confusing story about the people on our pavements. Where did they go, I wondered…it was like a magic trick, one day they are there, the next day….gone! It makes you wonder somehow, is freedom something you have to qualify for, like a club with a dress code. Do you need a proper shop, or a house with a roof, or at least a car to put a flag on, to be free. The takeaway seems to be that freedom isn’t for everyone. It is for the ‘haves;’ the ‘have-nots’ on the other hand, it seems, must settle for ‘have-not-to-be-seen’.
This tragic irony, this selective vision, extends from the pavements of the present, to the foundations of our future. We keep talking about our “bright future” and the “children who will build it”, but I saw pictures of the schools. Some of them look like they were built before gravity was properly invented. Children are trying to learn about the nation’s glorious past while bits of the ceiling is plotting its own diabolical future on their heads. We teach them about brave people who fought for a better tomorrow, in a classroom that might not have a tomorrow….how ironic is that!
If you think our approach to building the future is bizarre, wait until you hear what we do with nature. Nature, is the green stuff we haven’t put a building on yet. We love it so much, we build a big road, so millions of people can come and see it. But sleeping outside in nature is a bit dirty, so we chop down nature and build big concrete boxes called ‘hotels.’ So people can come and see nature, from inside a box, that is standing where nature used to be. It is all so complicated, it makes my head ache!
I also read about Umiam Lake, it is getting smaller and filling up with plastic. Soon it won’t be a lake…. it will be a sort of crunchy, wet landfill, filled with everything we’ve thrown away since 1973. It is not just polluted, it is evolving. Soon, it might achieve self-awareness and crawl out of its bed, a great, sludgy monster demanding to know who’s in charge. We won’t be celebrating independence then; we will be running from a sentient “Bin- Lake.” Will people still come and take selfies with it, putting up captions like: “Standing by this legendary landmark which smells like 50 years of fish and chips. #TrashyButClassy” and “I like my lake like I like my tea, dark, dark, and with mysterious lumps. #BrewedByPollution.”
This all comes from greed, doesn’t it…..and avarice, which is just a fancy word for people who want to be greedy in a more expensive way. We want more, but what is ‘more’…..another floor on a building, another car in a jam, another plastic chair by a waterfall?
So what now, the party’s over and the last of the patriotic WhatsApp forwards has been sent. We’re all free again, free to ignore our poor, free to send our children to wobbly class rooms, and free to turn our beautiful hills into a car park with a view.
Maybe that’s the real meaning of Independence Day. It is not a celebration, it is a distraction.
I think I’ll take my little car flag down now; it seems to have served its purpose. We wave it once a year to prove we are free.
Perhaps this is the heaven Tagore prayed for….not a country that has awakened but one that is finally free to remain asleep……