Democratic dominion

I woke up in a perspired fit of queasiness and dilemma at 3:00am. The ghostly night was engrossed hailing its victory tales, reinstating my insomnias. “A dream it was”! I realized and gasped a deep breath. Not only horror gives us bruised sleeps these days, also the whining paranoia we are floating with.

The lathi man with his spectacled face walked out of my history book and smiled in my dream. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’, he said. Our very freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi is the one I have taken the privilege to quote. History periods made me yawn during school and now why are these historic wars still giving me such nightmares? People growled and hollered in bloodshed yearning for freedom. Thousands of helmeted men with swords were leading to irreparable destruction. I hauled myself from miseries reappearing in the bed.

Irrespective of nationalism, if I direct my binocular in various dimensions, every country has undergone a questing past. Quest for their freedom, combat for democracy and slogans echoing our memoirs!!!

Why was I still nauseated if it was just a dream? I convinced myself to have been dived in the revelry of democratic India but to no avail. Tough our past may seem, rather tougher it is to scrutinize our present. We are now the democrats. Each individual and almost every country around the globe has the freedom to speech. An era most desired by the triumphant freedom fighters has acquired its throne and should be written down in an indelible ink. Oops! Did I hear “The sufferings have not ended yet”??

Aha! I discovered the hidden reason behind my nagging antagonized dream. The wars are progressing, despotic conglomerates clenching and political spheres undoubtedly soaring to corruption. That’s where democracy has flared its wings. Middle East Asians, Europeans, etc have all faced brutal monarchy in the past decades. Surviving under the suffocating rules of emperors, we made slogans like ‘Do or Die’ and ‘Inqalab zindabad’ happen. Today, how do we rank the scenario? Are we fortunate to have shed the grip of power or shall I say we have drifted from one boat to the other? May be the overt rule has taken the shape of a covert hypocrisy. The trend of ‘being slaves’ is continual. It is just

the ruler that has altered. Iron dome has replaced swords, politicians have taken over warriors and technologies pride upon ancient horses.

An 18 year old fleeing with her beloved, tender girls being raped, blatant atrocities of politicians and hapless governments are the fruits of democratic nations. It forces me to reconsider what the old, spectacled man told me in my dream. Yes! Be the change you want to see in the world. Be a peace lover, be God fearing and last, but not the least, be humanitarian.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, I know this freedom lover will not stop smiling in my dreams till then.

Reviews

[Ahmad Cox]

Fight on Freedom Fighter. Fight on !!

[Marie]

Tegon Maus is right. But you have been shown the siver lining by one of our greatest leaders.

[Kajal Gulabani]

We have, and I just hope, a great leader emerges soon.

[Tegon Maus]

People will always be people... it has never changed. Different, invisible ropes that bind us now but all are still at the will of those that sit at the head of the table. Never content to let things be as things will be.

[Kajal Gulabani]

So true. We end up asking for something, then, when we have it, cribbing about it.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

You are without doubt a thinker, a gladiator of triumph over evil.

[Kajal Gulabani]

Thnx John.

[Clayton Bardwell]

A troubled dream on some of the more important social issues of our troubled time.

[Kajal Gulabani]

Yes. Compels us to think what is it that we are looking for.