Fourth Sunday of December 2012,
shall not be forgotten easily in the democratic history of the republic of
India. And this is the day I saw not one but three Delhi, together.. warped in
different times.. as if from different universes.
I walked past The Turkman Gate
mostly looking around, lost in prairie, where might have been the magnificient
Sita Raam Bazaar, the havelies
described as a world withih a world, those lavish Shish Mahals, the pleasure gardens, the jharokhas.. the world I dream-imagines with open eyes. I tried hard
to look for glimses, ruins, absolutely any form evidence that those existed.
All I could see was ruthless stains of time mixed with the careless ‘peeks of paan’.
Is it the same Raisina Hills that
inspired William Dalrymple to write those lines : “..... One of the greatest
marriages of architecture and urban planning to ever have left the drawing
board”? Are they the same ‘gridiron of wide avenues and open boulevards’ that I
see filled with outraged protestants in the December chill, facing water canon
for a girl they don’t know but they do care for?
I see not the week subdued common
man, I see rebel, I see the power of unity. And all of a sudden it dawns on me,
is this the central idea of democracy that they so clumsily tried to make me
understand all those years ago in the name of SST and EVS? This is not the unexpected;
in fact this is what was always expected of us. It took the modern Shishupal not only 100 but thousands of
thousands sins to make us realise the
potential of the sudarshan chakra we had.
Better late than never. Since we
have been Aroused and Awakened we shall not stop till the goal is reached.
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