Calcutta Diary

Calcutta Diary AM FAST falls the eventide. Another anniversary of the Republic came and went. How many amongst today's citizenry will either know, or care to remember, that this day was the same as the Independence Day of yore? Come January 26, the festoons would be out, the processions, the pledges, the unbounded enthusiasm of young hearts a-throb with passion. Patriotism was not then quite the resort of the shadier ones, out for making a fast buck. Not that the horizon of one's aspirations was ever altogether sharply etched out. You were supposed to drive the British out, and step into the wide, wide world, your head held high, the inheritor of a free nation. Beyond that benchmark of hope, everything else was a blur, an echo and a re-echo of haziness. Was it a fusion of ideologies, or a clash rather? You wanted to turn this way, your friend quite in the contrary direction: intense questionings, furious quarrels, unending polemics.