The Half-Baked Patriot (51%)

“Hey you! Out there in the cold 

getting desperate, getting bold,

Taking tricolor out of the fold, can you teach me?
Hey you! Standing in the aisles 

Posting pictures and those image files

Can you teach me?”

These are not exactly the Pink Floyd lines I wanted to hum along as I walked across the street, but something, or rather someone caught my attention. And my humming automatically changed to a robotic tone as I threw my voice hard enough to reach him.

Hey you! Yes you, right there. The one posting your tricolor loaded images all over the space. Pardon my ignorance but would you care to educate this ignorant soul on your identity and explain this phenomenon that you are contributing to?

The enthusiast looked up (Yes, that's what I named him till he disclosed his kind) and murmured in utter disbelief," Did you just ask me that for real?"

“Yes, I did.” I replied. For I was still waiting like an innocent child who has just asked his mother about a colorful balloon and waiting for the secret to reveal.

He paused, scorned at me, and then replied," Brother. You're an Indian? You should know that what you are calling a tricolor is our national flag, and what I am doing now is what a patriotic Indian would do."

A Patriotic Indian? That sounded new to me. Now I was more intrigued, more drawn and more tied to the phenomenon. I too wanted to belong to the clan, to the cohort, to the 21st century trend.

What is that I asked, this p-a-t-r-i-o-t-i-c Indian. "You are so naive", he replied. Are you an NRI who just lost your way to the country, a mentally retarded soul or someone too ignorant to notice the larger signs of life?, he kept on shooting the questions.

I felt like a soldier who fired a blank shot in air only to receive a barrage of cannon shots in reply. And probably for a zillionth time in my life, I felt naive again.

Naïve because I always thought a Patriot is someone who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. But this one was different. Calm and composed with his electronic gadgets silently making ‘patriotic’ sign gestures (Well I always thought that was the sign of satan), this Patriot, who so wanted to be named but won’t be started with his ‘rapid crash course in patriotism for me’.

“Now listen to me bro! And listen rather well.” he said. For this is very important that you follow these steps to turn yourself from an ‘ignorant earthling’ to a ‘patriotic individual’.

1. Start with small but elemental step: change your profile pic on Facebook, Twitter,

Whatsapp and other social media, to the Indian national flag and their spinoffs alongside

changing your status to “proud to be an Indian” or “Saare jahaan se acchha” etc. etc. But

don’t overdo it and make sure you restore back your stud profile picture and the ‘cheeky’

status at sharp 12:00 am on 27th Jan.

2. Post patriotic status messages on twitter, create fake pages on facebook etc. Best start

    an intellectual discussion around what has changed over the years and how the current

    Govt. is incompetent (it’s another matter that you don’t even know which Govt. is

    actually in power?)

3. Attend a social flag hoisting event in your neighborhood for just that long so you can take

    pictures with unsuspecting children holding the two rupee flags and post them on your fb

    timeline or twitter.

4. Watch Arnab Goswami’s debate re-runs. After all having watched him, you have watched

    What the ‘Nation’ had to say. What’s more patriotic than hearing your own opinion on

    grave matters from someone else’s mouth?

5. Try to also post pictures of your previous/current foreign country tours while lamenting

    on the status at the same time that nothing is better than your own country (And try to

    do that with your foreign country manufactured Phone or laptop on sites Not owned by

    your own country)

6. An alternative to above, be patriotic enough to not go to a foreign destination and opt for

    Goa instead (where you can be as patriotic as you want by ogling at...well...the

    foreigners)

7. Watch an India-Pakistan re-run while munching on a patriotic pack of Lays and Popcorn.

    Though, once in a while you are allowed to indulge in a 'dual citizenship' patriotic

    behavior with countries like Brazil, England, Germany etc. etc. (Yes, I am referring to the

    World Cup Football Indian fad)

8. Forward random patriotic messages and mails to people you seldom know with all the

    more patriotic instructions such as “Forward if you’re an Indian”, “Proud to be an Indian”.

9. Lament on every possible failure of Govt. like petrol prices, The K issue, too many dry

days and Global Warming......while watching a Salman Khan movie or Comedy Nights

with Kapil!

10. And last and the least, nothing beats watching Gadar or Lagaan while you are onto it!

Thus the list came to an end and I thanked the Patriot to move on with the new Patriotic Nirvana I had just attained, now humming the national anthem “Baby Doll main Sone di....”. Wait, or was it an Arijit Singh song. I am still a half-baked patriot!

And then it occurred. A stolen thought from G B Shaw who once exclaimed, "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." Hell yeah!!!

P.S: Before your WiFi connectivity gets lost and you suddenly lose your chance of being Indian, do read the blog and hit like while the net is on!

~Yours truly,

The Confused Patriot!

*Image courtesy: www.stuffosaurus.com