'Re-imagining Gandhi in 2022' Third Prize winner: TEJAS KOLHATKAR
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02/10/2022
The clock has struck 10:30 pm as I end the day and retire to bed for the night. I lay on my bed in complete silence, a silence so stiff that I can hear my own thoughts. I engulf my mind with these thoughts as these progress to show me how India has grown since the Independence gained in 1947, from the grueling influence of the British Kingdom over us for years.
“India has grown” my mind begins but gets countered immediately by the weight of an opposing point. “India hasn’t been able to achieve the goals that you have had in mind.”
“You envisioned a discrimination-free, non-violent, culturally inclusive and a vibrant country for yourself to look at as years pass and the nation develops. Have the preceding and the current parliamentary honors been able to achieve this goal?”.
I toy around with the questions in my mind for a while and answer those with a monosyllable, “No.” I had a beautiful, clean, successful, thriving and a progressive vision in mind about India as I wonder how the country would present itself to be, post-Independence. I almost feel as though all my efforts have been frivolous and in vain.
Like an Oracle, I predicted a corruption-free nation but all I see today are corrupts fleeing the country. What was to be a shining example of togetherness and a belongingness of all castes with each other, India has disappointed me and it is excruciatingly painful to see how all castes are fighting with each other.
A country which bathes in a holy river religiously is, today, under heavy blood bath! It saddens me. I simply wonder when India will grow to be the vision with which I look at it. Not just that but the profit & loss ratio that gets demonstrated today is so infuriating! The country that rose to success is facing a loss that plummets the economy to a standstill!
I so wish to see my motherland grow. I wish to see my country simply and merely how I have envisioned it to be as. I see egalitarian communities arising by a truckload but it needs to flourish. I pray for it to.
—Tejas Kolhatkar, SY JMC
I toy around with the questions in my mind for a while and answer those with a monosyllable, “No.” I had a beautiful, clean, successful, thriving and a progressive vision in mind about India as I wonder how the country would present itself to be, post-Independence. I almost feel as though all my efforts have been frivolous and in vain.
Like an Oracle, I predicted a corruption-free nation but all I see today are corrupts fleeing the country. What was to be a shining example of togetherness and a belongingness of all castes with each other, India has disappointed me and it is excruciatingly painful to see how all castes are fighting with each other.
A country which bathes in a holy river religiously is, today, under heavy blood bath! It saddens me. I simply wonder when India will grow to be the vision with which I look at it. Not just that but the profit & loss ratio that gets demonstrated today is so infuriating! The country that rose to success is facing a loss that plummets the economy to a standstill!
I so wish to see my motherland grow. I wish to see my country simply and merely how I have envisioned it to be as. I see egalitarian communities arising by a truckload but it needs to flourish. I pray for it to.
—Tejas Kolhatkar, SY JMC
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