"Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached"-- Vivekananda

In the year 1893, at the World Parliament of Religions Swami Vivekanada had called to the world "Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal"

As if the reverberations of his voice hit the shores of his motherland and the country started coming out of her deep slumber and lethargy. Born were the sons of freedom, the daughters of Shakti. The sons bathed the alter of Mother India with their life blood and the daughters with their silent tears.

In the sky of our national life, we saw the most spectacular aurora-borealis ever witnessesd in the history of civilization. Netaji Subhash Bose, shahid Khudiram, Rash Bihari Bosu, Chandra Sekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh................. the list goes on.

Sixty two years after our independence, we all sigh and ask why not one amongst us is capable of being Netaji or Bhagat Singh? What happened?

Since childhood I too had the same question and after asking it again and again to myself, I think I know the answer.

The aurora boreolis cannot be seen in the morning sky, hidden by the dazzling sun. Even though the phenomena is still taking place at all times, it is not always obvious. So are our nationalistic sentiments. Why do you feel a chill up your spine when you listen to "Khalbali hai Khalbali" in Rang de Basanti? or Why does your heart beat sings "Chak de, Chak de India", when Abhinav Bindra wins the Olympic gold medal? Why does a crowd gather infront of a tea stall to watch India take on Pakistan in a cricket match? Why does every run get cheered so much? What is the underlying sentiment? We all feel it, the nationalistic sentiment runs in the blood of each one of us.

Only they had a clear cut goal, an ideal of freedom which they united to workship. Our tasks ahead are equally gigantic but problems that face us are more diverse. We feel confused as to where we may start.

You see the ragpicker picking up the food u had thrown under your seat in the train compartment and you wish you could do something to help him. May be the person sitting beside you also feels the same way. But we are all sitting quitely and watching because we dont know what difference a lone soul can do on earth.

I go grocery shopping in the US and buy vegetables at more than ten times the price in the indian market. I wonder what difference it could make to the life of an indian farmer if we could figure out how to export our stuff to the US market. The US is flooded with chinese items...from pencil, eraser, bedsheets,lamps....and yet I dont find my country anywhere.

I wish youths with the right expertise step in and do to Indian manufacturing and exports what Narayan Murthy did to Indian IT.

May be the challenges that India faces in fulfilling her national aspirations and living upto her capbilities are far more complicated than that faced by any other country. But as President Kalam once put it :"If we aim for the stars, we are all the same."