For the past few weeks, I had an alarm set, and irritatingly and incorrectly, quite early in the morning. Everyday it would go buzzing in the morning at 5 AM, when I really didn't need to wake up until 7... the alarm tone was also a sleep kill and mood killer, with an shrill piercing tone. I would wake up every morning, and set it off, sometimes setting it on snooze. Needless to say, this little activity every morning would rob me any sound sleep for the next 2 hours.
I don't know why I let this status-quo continue for the subsequent weeks. Did I expect someone else would eventually change the alarm time? And the tone? But wasn't it my sleep? shouldn't I be taking care of it instead of depending on some imaginary eventual self change?
I finally reset the alarm today, changed the tone to a more peaceful one, and it actually seemed as if a weight had been lifted off. So amazing it is to look forward to those extra 2 hours of sleep, in peace!
And now if i extrapolate this scene to a larger picture, isn't this what we are doing to our society and politics? we let the status quo of rotting of the system continue. We expect things to change; quite arrogantly we expect others to change themselves and kick start the whole process of reforming India. And yes, some people do actually try to abide by the rules, to be honest to the system. But a minority hardly ever leads a change.
Or so we think. With a kind of third revolution underway in India (the first two ones I would historically, and a little inaccurately probably, refer to the sepoy mutiny of 1857 and then the silent long struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi), Mr Anna Hazare has taken it upon himself, at an age of 74, to change the system for us. Maybe his struggle will help us, maybe it won't. But what will do to us? I read at a friend's post recently that the change has to begin at home.. don't pay bribes, don't bypass the system. Why did the VP of Morgan Stanley say he found it easier to play by the book in HK? isn't this a question we should really probe within ourselves?
Changes are always tough on self. To change from way of life we have become used to, to something that would require us to do more work and running about (at least in the initial phases of change), it is hardly a surprise that we have not achieved any significant progress in politics as well as our beliefs and thoughts. We seem to need a constant backing, some accolade when we do something great. The truth is, whenever we do anything correctly, it is what we're expected to do, and not some favour.
I'm hugely inspired by Anna Hazare. Not that I have the need to go to Ramlila Grounds and fast, but because here is a man, who wants to bring about a change not for himself, but for an entire nation! How often do we have people of this greatness and depth !
Critics of the methods he employs will always exist. (Critics are anyway a byproduct of any event that occurs, however mundane). If anything, that should give us more perseverance to adopt the rightousness that Mr Anna Hazare aims to achieve.
Rabrindranath Tagore once wrote a beautiful poem "Let my country awake", I wish and pray, to let Indians awake!
Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
~ Rabrindranath Tagore
PS - No matter how much our PM says about the undemocratic ways and means employed, for me "the end would define the means".
