Freedom....

Today, I figured out a new way to reach this blog (Thanks to Live.com):
Type "madhur dixit" on your IE address bar (yes address bar!!). It will take you to Live.com search results for "madhur dixit". Now scroll down at the last result, it should be this blog.

Its not long ago when we had our independence day holiday and we were asked to stay away from office,as coming to office on that day would be a violation of some weird act known as Shops & Establishments Act. What an irony, on independence day, you need to follow some law which prohibits you from going to a very usual place like your work.

Anyway, I sat back at home and listened to Rehman's JaiHe on almost all TV channels performed by highly esteemed singers and instrumentalists (is it the right name for these folks?? dont know). To do my part, I tried playing Jan-Gan-Man, on my guitar and failed miserably. It turned out that I started to contemplate on what is the degree of freedom we all enjoy and what all are the parameters it depends on:

Parameter # 1: Money (and Fame):
I dont want to keep fame as a separate parameter because people who are famous but not rich hardly enjoy any freedom. For example, you'll find Medha Patkar mostly in jail rather than out in the open. She is famous but not rich.
On the other hand, you have Abhishek Bachhan, who has all the freedom to speak his mind. Recently, I read his quote on TOI -" babies shouldnt be planned, they should just happen". If we had a strict family planning law which would prosecute people who publicly encourage having large familiies, Abhishek would have been bars right now. Dude, enjoy your freedom. He is both Rich and Famous.

Parameter # 2: Political backing:
I could have written something separately on this, but turns out that all politicians are rich and famous anyway. Besides, they have all the liberty to throw chairs and mics on their colleagues in parliament. Ever wondered, if you and I had thrown chairs on our colleagues, we would have been laid off by now for violating standards of business conduct.

Parameter # n: Break the law guts:
This is the nth parameter as I am not aware of all parameters from 3 to (n-1). But the nth parameter deserves a special mention. There are folks who knowingly break the law, and get away with it. There would be so many aspiring Telgis, who would like to make thousands of crores at the cost of spending some 10-13 years in jail. Isn't this too less for a multi-billion scam. Specially when majority of the people in Indian work for whole of their life to earn few thousands/lakhs of rupees.

So much for free India, while I crib about not being able to enter most pubs in Hyderabad because they dont "allow" singles in, there are folks in this country, who work day and nite to earn their bread, in coal mines, begging on traffic signals, breaking stones etc. [So mean here to write etc]. Good news is that there are some professions like maid servants, cook, driver which have started to pay really good sum of money.