Kartikey Sehgal

[Fiction]

On 26TH January, 2010, every state of India paraded its best to the nation. Maharashtra presented the much celebrated dubba wallas who travel in sweat and danger on (in, over) local trains. Who ensure that the food reaches the Mumbai residents on time. These men, marked for their punctuality and honesty, live in a state that sees farmers dying in Vidarbha.

Among the celebratory troops of states were men, or at least one, who wondered if the salutes of the political leaders watching them bore any truth in their actions. Was the waving of the hand meant to be an assurance that we are watching over you.

Was the salute to the troops a reminder that we remember the civilians killed in terrorist strikes. And the families of soldiers who live in unknown villages.

Or perhaps the soldiers.

Then these imaginative men from the troops shouted out to the politicians. “Revive craftsmanship in villages” “A self-sustainable network of villages marked by poverty” “Indigenous small scale industries” “Shantiniketan as a model of large-scale universities”.

But the political leaders, deafened by the loud noises or otherwise, thought these were chants of Vande Mataram and replied, or mimed, “Vande Mataram”.

Then one of these thinkers was told by his friend from the troop, “Why are you not positive. You have been given a unique chance to participate in such a function. Don’t make every national event a chance to rant and complain”.

After the function, the men went to watch the sun set from the midst of winter fog. “I think it has set”, the friend told his thinker friend. “Let us take a walk.”

And so they walked the Delhi streets. The thinker had a heavy heart. Either out of his love for life, of living in a better nation, or from guilt of feeling bad about his circumstances.

The peanuts they bought from a vendor were tasty.