Long Live My Dear Country!

I remember reading a Bangladeshi poem, that started like,

"मुझे भात दे हरामज़ादे, वरना मैं तुम्हारा मानचित्र खा जाऊँगा"

The magazine had cited it as evidence of evolving anarchist literature in Bangladesh.  Poet is predicting, perhaps beseeching, a mass scale social unrest, a cataclysmic revolution, that has the potential to disintegrate the nation. Use of a very common expletive can be associated with anger and contempt for the nation that can not feed its people. What's the use then? Nothing justifies its existence or continuance.

He is not talking of a big change or even a new order, something that one associates with a revolutionary change; he says the nation will be gone! It's not disillusionment with a system or a government. It's questioning the very justification of an entire nation. He is not offering any solution either. Because he has none. He reckons situation has gone beyond redemption! So, he only offers complete destruction. Does he hope something good will come out of that? We will never know. That would have been so romantic. Who does not love a constructive destruction. Nothing is more intoxicating than an idea of something great coming out of the destruction of a mediocre or poor system. But this person offers no such hope. He offers nothing. Simple, plain destruction, if you like. That makes him so dangerous. This poem is not about lack of solution; it's about absence of hope itself!

This simple, raw sentence had a stunning impact on me in that impressionable young age. There was a message, a lesson: there is no country for a hungry stomach; neither religion nor any other allegiance can compensate for basic physical needs.

A lesson well learnt, I would say.

People are scared of being alone. It makes them feel small and vulnerable and, hence, are more than willing to commit to something they think bigger than themselves. One of our original social needs. We are lost unless given something to identify with. But we do need to be fed. Not necessarily a full meal thrice a day, but something at least for God's sake.

And when I see this deluge of patriotism among the fellow countrymen, I feel so grateful to our political bosses. Final proof that they have rid us of hunger at last, restoring us back to decent human beings.

Long live India!