Monday, 9 February 2015

THE DAY OF THE LITTLE GUY

7th February 2015

If you were born little, of little parents and you have stayed little, then the sight of the little fella walloping the living daylights out of the pompous, overbearing big guy will warm your heart.

7th February 2015 is now chiselled in Indian history as the Day Of The Little Guy.  They belittled him as Muffler Man.  Then they labelled him an anarchist.  When the barrels of their meagre vocabularies emptied, they scraped the bottom and came up with "monkey" and "chor" (thief).  But all that name calling in the end added up to the whimpering of the big bully who was getting licked in his own backyard.

Arvind has a little frame.  He is diminutive in size.  His dress sense is working class.  But for those of us who have been following him with hope in our hearts and a prayer on our lips, Arvind is a rational thought process that soars high above the thump-thump of the fifty-six inch chest and conjures up the fond vision of the resurrection of a dream dreamt by our parents sixty-seven years ago and thereafter systematically raped, brutalized and decimated by a political narrative largely authored by the Congress Party.

Today, millions of nameless, faceless citizens of the republic like me reach out with our trembling hands to pick up the tatters of that mutilated dream of our parents and clasp it to our chest, wondering whether miracles are possible after all.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that my two little children will one day live in a republic where they will not be judged by their family wealth or pedigree but by the content of their character and their capabilities.

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