Freedom

Seventy years of Freedom the speakers blared

Freedom from the British glare!

Are we really free ? , I ask didi 

(Didi, in her starched white pinafore stands next to me as the headboy hoists our tricoloured pride)

Oh yes Chinnu, yes we are free

Do you see a white squeezing us tight ?

Instead we are in whites
Rejoicing our rights.

'Rights to what didi ?' I mused

Rights to express and speak your mind

Rights to educate so we may break the shackles that bind

Rights that make us independent, rights that make us Indian

But wait a second, I said
Making her patriotic prose come to a pause
why wouldn't Amma let me run around in my chaddi ?

And leave my bed untidy ? 

Where is my right to cut class and play wild

And break the rules wrought on a child

Didi's brow furrowed into a quizzical knot

See, Chinnu that's not what's ought 

You don't get it, neither do our politicians 

Or the crony capitalists who make use of situations 

Freedom is nectar that our forefathers gathered 

Nectar that helps us grow as a country untethered

Freedom does not mean shouting blasphemy on media

Or throwing riots driven by rotten ideas 

Freedom, Chinnu is precious indeed

While it breaks us from colonial shackles

It chains us to the golden concept of a glorious India

That grows unfettered by the evils of caste and creed

and blossoms into a country with men of great deeds!