55 years of being a Republic!
55 years of strife and struggle,
55 years of hope and despair,
55 years of triumphs and tragedies...
      of lost ideals and missed stations;
      of hunger and poverty;
      of the suffering of countless millions;
Of the tears in the eyes of a mother...
      who looks on as her child cries,
      for food and for it's right to live;
55 years of living on a land...
      which is our own.
A land, which has been made wet,
      by the blood and sweat of it's children.
A land which now feeds the very children...
      who once died of hunger on its plains.
A Land called India!

A land where people once died, because they did not have food.
Where wheat was once imported. This very land now produces enough
to feed it's own population.
      These past years have seen tragedies, but there were triumphs.
      People still live below the poverty line, but there are also people who
are rich. People still die of plague, but we also have hospitals with the
most sophisticated equipments.
      People still travel in carts pulled by bullocks, but we also have people
being driven around in limousines.
      People think there is a corrupted world out there, but there are still
lone crusaders lighting the candle in the dark night.
      Some may think such comparisons only show the great disparities
between the people of the same region. But for me these are the signs
of progress. Not a candle in the night, but a sun rising after the twilight
darkness.
      Sometimes dark clouds appear and surround us and sometimes they
go away , we cannot control them. We cannot also control the outcome.
But what we can do is to strive to achieve what we want.
      And we want to be free,
      Free to do what we want,
      Free to express ones thoughts...
            without fear of life or limb.
So let's work towards that goal, and leave the rest in the Hands of Destiny!

Concluded.

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* Contributed by: -
Aakash Gupta,
Software Professional at Kanbay Inc.,
B.E. (Electronics), D. Y. Patil College of Engineering, Pune University,
An aspiring CAT 2005 candidate.