The Hands that build India

This title, is a modified line of a song “The Hands that built America” taken from the soundtrack of the film “Gangs of New York” which plays during the end credits that start rolling right after a violent battle between gangsters for dignity and satisfactory survival concludes. The staggering irony is, it is shown in the movie that America which developed into a nation of Empire States and WTCs, as the movie’s tagline suggests, was born on streets. India and America are two different countries, they faced different problems and their needs and dreams and requirements are different, but what continues to be a common truth, for any country let alone India or America, is that any country for its development needs men who would fight for their existence, because like any creature who can feel, its existence matters.
Around 5 lakh engineers were produced in India in 2011, out of them only 17.45% are employable. With more than 113 universities and over 2100 colleges, this is a generation of confounded, angst ridden youngsters, who are afraid to run away from their houses, invent a job for themselves, and then return with success written on their Ts.

Or they just accept the shortcut, buy a degree, find a job and then forget about life. Life that doesn’t really exist, but since there is a bed to sleep, a fancy shirt to wear and someone to talk to, it doesn’t make a lot of difference. Every year, since the day I joined an engineering college, there is a youngster, calling me, asking me, which engineering course he/she should choose and I ask him/her why, you want to join engineering, they tell me, because they can find a job easily.
Why is it that merely finding a job is the last resort. Inside an office in front of a computer someone may/may not do anything that he/she might really enjoy doing, but because they’ll earn money, rather easily so they are ready to do anything. And to be precise I am a part of that youth, and us lazy generation don’t think.

In meetings people literally argue, how much they struggled and they are just not happy about it, and I don’t understand in case someone really loves about whatever he/she is doing why would someone not be happy about his struggle. The point is nothing really matters in terms of growth and development, all that matters is pay scale, people who can be afraid of us, someone outside may get attracted to the enigma that one can create and for that our generation is ready to sell our souls.
Or perhaps, it was hard coded in our system? Just to breathe through our lives we accept slavery, maybe because to show off a seal we do it, and we ignore that we are not really contributing towards better living standards. People here sit inside offices late, because we are afraid that this, whatever we have, if it is lost then it is a done deal and there is no way out. Or maybe because we know that there is nothing else that we can do.
And we are the hands who build India, who are plain clueless, afraid of severities which are hypothetical. And because we are lazy, we don’t want to try, not anymore. If something falls our way, we’d grab it, be it job or life. We wait for something to happen and nothing really happens and we just move on, after a point all of us are frustrated, angry, disappointed. And we still carry on, we don’t have anything fruitful to talk about, so we talk about people around us. We find entertainment in troubling others around us, to see someone troublesome in trouble gives us a cheap thrill, and we don’t realize that it is just sad.
And then people talk about social improvement, charity, issues that are impactful globally, but what about the issues impacting us? Every act of brutality is an after effect of prolonged sadness, because it is after all an extremely passionate move, of some one really passionate about something, unfortunately his passion got directed in wrong direction.

And because we just gave up, we no longer wish to fight for ourselves, we are still not free and though Englishmen have left, we have not left our mentality of being a slave, somewhere at some stage of time, we have been afraid to complain, afraid to stand up for ourselves because we are just dependent, we were dependent and perhaps will be for the rest of our lives and don’t want to lose those who feed our dependence. Because, may be have this inherited and because may be we will pass it on to the future, and like we are hearing for last 10 years, we will become a super power in next 10 years, we will keep hearing it for the rest of our lifetimes, and I blame no one else for such a situation but myself, because I didn’t put up a fight with reality, where somewhere in between I lost my search for truth and accepted whatever crossed my way, stopped fighting for something that would add meaning to my existence and I will, forever be guilty, for contributing my hands towards building a flawed India.