A cynic who has lost all his ideals to thorny realism, who has lost all hopes and is currently living in a helical existential dread walks on the Rajpath road, his account:
1st June 2019, Narendra Modi has already sworn in as the Prime Minister of the country and me, a quote-unquote liberal has lost all hope in this country lost but still obliged to the natural and involuntary process of breathing. Tired of walking through the National Museum of ancient art and history I decided to visit The Rajpath Road, with not many preconceived notions about the experience I didn’t even think about it while travelling there, just lost, numb, sat in an auto-rickshaw whose driver completely screwed us (me and my friend Yash) up by charging a ridiculous amount for a, my bad, walkable distance. Like any other privileged being I dropped it off and got out of the rickshaw and there I was, the massive India Gate on my right, standing tall and looking down on all of the crowd that has accumulated to just see it stand and on my left, hiding in the mist of CO2 and potential cancer was Rashtrapati Bhawan. Because of some ‘Indian’ reason, India gate wasn’t in my reach to experience so I decided to walk down to Rashtrapati Bhawan. Clueless of what was waiting for me I started walking, Yash was there to accompany me. The Bhawan was standing tall like a giant mountain which always looks accessible but is always far far away. The simple walk of some couple of kilometres was feeling like an unending trek! Sun was settling and Moon started to shine in the still luminous sky. While walking, I swallowed the last available drop of saliva in my mouth, (such drama) and stopped to drink a Limbu Shikanji. Now I was all charged up, all this while, since we started walking, a instrumental version of the song, saare jahaan se acccha, Hindostan humara was playing in the background. Oh, maybe that’s why my hands were swaying way too high in the air…
As we got closer and closer to the mammoth, the Rashtrapati Bhawan it seemed like it was playing a little game of hide and seek. Two Other Mammoth building, North block and South block were standing in between me and The Rashtrapati Bhawan, as beautiful as the Bhawan Itself.
As we were near the last chouraha, which was separating us and the Bhawan, the sun was finally settled, ready to wake up people on the other side of the world and the lights to illuminate the buildings were switched on! Oh, how beautiful was the building, a borrowed nostalgia, which I snatched from a woven fantasy was there with me to add the cherry to the experience. I continuously thought about how the great people in our country throughout the history would have walked through the same Rajpath Road clueless of what they were going to achieve and how the nobody’s of this world would have come here and cried to curse their very reality. All of these thoughts were continuously running like a rat in a box, in my head.
Finally, we crossed the road and there it was, the very Manifestation of art and optimism, the embodiment of patriotism and beauty, standing tall as if it doesn’t matter what’s happening around. Unaffected by the very entropy of the universe and by the flow of time, there was this building, standing tall. It must have endured ao much of hardships throughout the history and must have been the ‘gawah’ of all the beautiful and moments worth of celebration that came with it.
Standing there, like a no one, between these massive structures of history and that of future I, a cynic was magically filled with optimism, Optimism of how this all is going to pass and how everything has and will eventually work out. India will rise again like a phoenix!
After all, the air was there to believe with me and to sing along, Saare jaha se accha hindostan humara
Blobiobolis 