Hello, fellow countryman.
What box would you like to put me in today?
We stand free, don’t we, as we have, 71 times around the sun?
We claim we stand free, but how can freedom manifest without the power to assert it?
Do you seek to render me powerless, my countryman, to put me in the boxes that suit you?
Is freedom a joke then? A cruel joke played by the powerful upon the powerless?
But hah, fellow countryman, for you will not silence me.
I don’t fit in your boxes,
I never did,
I never will,
For try as you might,
A Hindu-Muslim Bengali-Malayali Maharashtrian Goan whose first language is English and second language is Hindi
Will break every box you try to stuff him in.
I will see you, fellow countryman,
Next year
And the year after
Until the boxes cease
Or until I do.
Happy Independence Day.
Jai Hind.