She Cannot Be Free
She Cannot Be Free
India is independent.
She has been independent for the past 73 years. All the textbooks we read in school claim proudly, 'India is free'. Even the important people, the scholars and intellectuals and also the big businessmen say the same thing.
Therefore, she should be free. From the moment the British left her blood-stained land she should have regained her peace and freedom, but she hasn't. Our Mother is still shackled, captured by chains not of the foreigners but of her own children.
How can Mother India be free when she is forced to watch her daughters face inhumane torture? How can she consider herself independent when her children are dying of starvation and poverty? How can she be in peace when her children are destroying each other every day?
She cannot. India is not free, she isn't independent and she is not in peace.
Her soul cries out when she embraces the corpses of little girl children. Her heart aches when she witnesses the torments her daughters have to endure in the name of dowry and domestic violence. Her insides burn when she watches the bony, malnourished figures of her children running about in crowded, unclean slums.
No, India is not free. She cannot be free when her children are living like this. When her daughters are unsafe in their own homeland and her children have no grain to consume.
She questions herself, asking where she went wrong. Why has her golden land fallen to such lows? Why are her children suffering so much? Where has humanity gone?
No one answers her, so she weeps all by herself.
Her forlorn eyes await a day, a day when all these atrocities will come to an end. She hopes and prays for all her children.
"Let my daughters be safe. Let everyone have grains. Let love prevail."
Her wish is far from fulfillment. But she waits with immense patience. Till that day comes, she will remain shackled. She won't be free. She cannot be free.