INDEPENDENCE

I was born free, in a free country, whose poor are still ‘in dependence’.
N o longer slaves of an alien monarch, my parents’ generation gulped down
D emocracy as dessert at their midnight freedom party. A single pill panacea
E nd of all troubles and exploitations. Now let long-cherished dreams fructify
P atriotic ideals, treasured aspirations freely flower into a world of plenty,
E quality and tranquility. Alas! Reality jolts cruelly with unemployment.
N ever-ending riots, lynch mobs, floods, quakes, droughts, starvations, pandemics, and fanatics!
D emocracy’s guardians loot merrily, mercilessly dwarfing foreign plunderers!
E ndemic problems, left-overs of history, new ones created by ruling oligarchs…
N uclear India - a rising world power spawning dollar billionaires and hungry masses.
C itizen Jayachandran of the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India is upset, unhappy,
E ven enraged! They gave me a stillborn Independence! And my JAI HIND a cry in the wilderness…