Every year for Indians, January comes with the feeling of patriotism. On 26^th January we celebrate our independence day with all dignity and splendor. Every young and old try to show some gesture of patriotism, never mind if it disappears next day. Soaked in the same feeling, I was searching TV channels, to find out, what special do they have on the occasion of our 61st republic day? During this search, I found that they were asking people of different ages, what do these people like about India and what they dislike?  

            All of a sudden, I couldn’t resist my eyes and ears from one channel, which was showing a beautiful song from an old movie named Jagriti sung by Mohammad Rafi. The song was ‘hum layen hain toofan se kishti nikal ke, is desh ko rakhna mere bachon sambhal ke’. This is one of my favorites from the childhood. Whenever I hear this song it motivates me to do something for my country, it makes me more accountable citizen of India. Yes I do agree that being born in free India it’s our responsibility to preserve and respect our freedom, which is the result of selfless sacrifice of number of freedom fighters. The song instantly motivated me that why should not I have views of my son on what he feels about his country.  

            With this determination, I called my son, who is 12 year old and studies in 7^th standard. I started with little anxiety, as I was not sure of what would come in return.

After little hesitation, I came straight to the point and asked “Dear son on this republic day I would like to know how you feel about India, your mother land?”   

            The thoughts that he shared with me were although limited to his text books, daily doze of news from TV, newspaper and observations around him, but were really heartwarming and I could not overcome the urge to share them with my fellow writers. 

The first thing that makes him proud is the feeling of freedom as he thinks it means a lot to him. He said,” sense of freedom gives us right to express, to choose, to follow and to reject also. No outsider is compelling us to lead our lives in his (outsider) way.” As he has read in his civics textbook and he is familiar that our constitution gives us many rights. But, he reckons that many duties are mentioned too.  

His country is seventh largest country in the world (area wise). It’s distinctive geographical body that is surrounded by mountains, and sea makes his country unique. “Where else will we find desert, mountains, valleys, beaches, grasslands, lakes and rivers at one place?” he asked excitingly. He reminded me of snowcapped Himalayan ranges, dazzling sandy beaches of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and sand dunes of endless golden deserts in Rajasthan.  

He further said, “The intriguing past of India makes me keen to know more about India.” This statement revealed his liking for history, the subject. He wants to explore all the shades of it whether good or bad. He feels we can learn a few things from history to make our today better and cherish the good things.

He feels proud about his early leaders because despite all odds they’ve chosen the righteous path and lived for others. He said, “Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Pt. Jawharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Bhagat singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, and many more who have contributed in freedom fighting, were all men of values. Their hearts were full of patriotism. One can learn number of good things from each one of them. They were the people who believed in action rather then words.” And for me undoubtedly, that is the big enough reason to inspire writers to write books, moviemakers to make movies and educationists to put them in the school curriculum. As for present leaders, they lack dignity and are mostly old and corrupt. He looks upon Rahul Gandhi as one of the Leaders who may carry our glorious legacy ahead.   

He thinks rich cultural heritage of his country is certainly a thing of pride. He said, “Very few countries enjoy such variety and we are lucky to have it in our country.” He feels those different languages, religions, dresses, cultures, festivals and dances all make his country spectacular. What amazes him is that even after differences every one is living together. He said, “It is written in our text books that unity in diversity is a unique characteristic of our country.” All of a sudden he became anxious as if something was bothering him; that made me eager to know the cause. So, I asked, “What is it troubling you my son.” In stead of a reply he asked me innocently, “mom! If unity is the integral part of Indian culture then why now a days unity is seldom seen?” I was speechless but I could clearly see that he was perturbed by recent incidents. If this will continue then the day is not far when there will be no India. To divert him I asked him about the cuisine of India. With twinkling eyes he said, “I just love the variety. We are so lucky to have so much variety to satisfy our taste buds.”       

As he is a sports lover so, I want to hear something about sports. He said, “I’m proud of having Sachin Tendulkar, Kapildev, Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, M.S.Dhoni, and the whole cricket team. Other then cricket I will allow for Indian hockey team, Abhinav Bindra, Leander Paes, Sania Mirza, Mahesh Bhupati, Saina Nehwal, Vijendar Singh, Bhaichung Bhutia, and all those sportspersons who bring laurels to our country but many of them remain unknown to us.” Yes he was true because these are the few names that we know and there are number of sports person who despite of all odds have made their impression but lost somewhere after words. He further said, “Whatever happened with Bindra and the hockey team or IPL, such incidents are not good for the spirit of sports. Our system should support sportsmen.”   

And in the end, he concluded his admiration by this – he is proud of his country for having composers like A.R. Rehman and singers like Sukwinder Singh, dancers like Shyamak Dawar and acters like Amitabh Bachan as well as Aamir Khan.  

After talking about the good points he told me things that he doesn’t like or would like to change.  

The first thing he told me was exclusively related to a school going child. He said,” he feels that our education is not a fun, it’s quite boring.” When I asked him that what made him to say that? He asked innocently, mom just tell mom “why do we have theory exams for computers? Even my teacher thinks so.” Besides this, even after so many years we are not able to impart basic education to every child of our country. Government has not made any strict rule that can compel parents to send their children to schools. It’s really bad to see them begging roadside or picking rags from the garbage.  

 He thinks India is overpopulated. And soon shall become the most populated country in the world.  

He feels Indians are impatient and that is why they are fond of breaking queues. He supported his observation like this-“Mom whenever parents come to school for parent teacher meeting, many of them fail to come in time and after coming late they try to jump the queue.” Not only in school one can observe this very often in other places as well. There was no reason to deny. 

Then he talked about the idea of cleanliness. He said, “I’m little bit confused about the idea of cleanliness in India. We give so much stress on our personal cleanliness but we are least bothered about our surroundings. People complain for dirty and filthy environment but contribute to it blatantly. When I walk on the road I am extra careful that I do not step on the spits or animal dung and its is very odd to see people spitting on the road from buses, cars, cycles or simply standing on the roadside.”  

The news of A.R.Rehman getting two Grammies again fills him with joy and he has already started dreaming about one of the films getting an Oscar this time, India hosting the Common Wealth games with never seen grandeur and the new sport complexes interlinked with new metro routes, which is making traveling in the capital of India to international standards.  

I was happy to see that my child had enough reasons to love his country, which could easily be overlooked even by adults.