You know, whenever I read about our Constitution, it makes me wonder, as to what is independence? Was it just a day? Or was it a starting point of something significant?

What is happening to India isn’t just India’s result but also a combination of the inconsistencies across the globe and co-incidences?

Irrespective of how we have come along these 64 years, I still can say, India is its competitor, and one needs to look in before looking out. I never realized much about being an Indian when I was in India because I didn’t understand its feelings.

Over the last few years, whenever I am outside of the country, my passport (which is the defining factor mostly) speaks a lot and then meets people. Many are informed about India through different opinions, and all I add is another opinion from an Indian perspective. There are several perspectives on a particular thing, just like we have several Gods and Goddesses in our mythology. We fight to prove our views are right, but I guess I realized that’s the beauty of the country I was born.

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of a kind because oneness is the secret of everything.” – Swami Vivekananda

Over the years, India has made people give their opinions and that I feel is a freedom of speech. So in that sense, I am independent to give out my thoughts. That’s fine until now. I sense we need to move ahead and take a step forward with the conviction that action speaks louder than opinions.

I believe we seek to be independent more than ever before, at least in my generation of living. We, the people, haven’t realized the government’s power that is made by people alone. We need to understand the importance of being a drop and its contribution to the ocean. I seek our country to be more self-aware and for that each individual to be self-aware before going out and condemning things.

As Swami Vivekananda said – “The goal of mankind is knowledge… now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’ should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.”

India is merely a geographical land if we remove the masses from it. So in that sense, I have to think of the power we people hold. We can accept, we can change, and at times we can hope for the better.

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies” – Shawshank Redemption