THE NEO CLASSICAL REBEL- confessions of a beautiful mind
With snapshot, hit-you-in-the-gut movies like Rang de Basanti and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi hitting the right spot with the youth, wisps of change are howling themselves hoarse for a revolution. Complex and highly exaggerated as it sounds, today’s youth stands tall and distinct, a tad different from the young and the restless of yesteryears. For them, rebellion does not mean outright violence. But it does mean letting the other side know your strength, without resorting to logic less, stoical display of power. For these very people, the Independence Day is just not a gazetted holiday; it is a day to reckon and revaluate the legacy of ideas that we have been carrying on for the past 59 years.
Students today, understand and accept their role as future citizens with surprising maturity. One quick, crude survey and you are surprised at the unanimous conclusions that these students reach at. Being a rebel today, is not synonymous with being a gypsy, neither does saying kewl make you any cooler. This generation knows where to pull the plugs, and where to let the water flow.
Believes Pragya, a student of History at Hindu College, “All I can say is that freedom is not free. And according to me, India isn’t free yet. It is still bounded by the shackles of the caste system. What are forefathers fought so passionately for, it is our duty to sustain and propagate.” For students today, Independence doesn’t simply imply the end of imperialism. To push its meaning beyond linguistic parameters, independence for the youth today means a collective nation, free from the claws of decadence. Elucidates Vaibhav Bhatnagar, a student of Ramjas College, “India will be independent when the disease of corruption will be eradicated. When I won’t have to pay bribe to get a phone connection or when I won’t have to please t eh cops to get passport clearance.”
Of course, the issues are endless. From an undignified response to the RTI act to a stinking bureaucracy, these young rebels have solutions for every problem on the platter. But as Mervin Samuel George summarises it all with a pint of dejection, “These politicians disregard us, asking us for degrees to run the nation, when they themselves cannot differentiate between balloons and condoms.”
With many obstacles in the way, true freedom appears a distant dream. But on a brighter note, it seems that Independence has newer representatives.
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