Saturday 16 August 2014

INDEPENDENCE DAY ABROAD

The 68th independence day for our great nation was up yesterday.

As small kids we remember the history lessons we learnt with patriotism, and the names like Mahatma gandhi, Bhagat singh, Subash chandra bose , Jawahar lal nehru and many more. Every year we have a function at school , with flag hoisting and a speech and of course a beautiful round laddoo as a mark of celebration.. The TV channels played movies like Roja, Mother India, Dil se year after year whetting up the national fervor. The cricket matches too used to whip up the patriotic feeling.

Then life moved on... cricketers playing for clubs, and lesser matches for India. We flew to foreign shores. No more history lessons to remind us of the struggle taken up for this day. Slowly it became just a holiday with an off from work....

Our little girl who started her school this year , recently learnt the national anthem. She was bringing up her class almanac to teach us JANA GANA MANA. She was surprised to know that we also knew of it and it was our national anthem. She knows we are Indian and we look around for Indians, Indian restaurants, Indian supermarkets here in UAE .

But what is India in her mind. So this year we took her to the SHARJAH INDIAN ASSOCIATION for the Independence day celebrations.. With a gathering of a lot of Indians, she got to see the hoisting of the Indian flag, albeit in foreign shores. As we sang our national anthem, we were proud to see our little one standing in attention and singing the full anthem. The national pride was being shared with a new generation. The past was being engraved in their tiny minds. We hope these are the images and feeling of being Indian that she carries forward.

We missed the laddoos, and were sad that our daughter didn't get to associate that simple sweet with our independence day.

JAI HIND.
We miss INDIA.

To our 68 years of independence, for Indians all over the world.

ZAIN & FARZ

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