Yet another one came and went. That makes fifty-five of them so far. This one took the cake. A power-cut - they call it 'load shedding' - from four in the afternoon to ten in the night. Six hours of roasting in the humid heat of Delhi in August. Some Independence Day! Independence… from what? Old masters had given way to new ones, just as bad as their predecessors: perhaps worse. A hard-boiled, thick-skinned cynicism rode the shoulders of the body politic like an incubus.

Few of those who were there at that first 15th August are alive today. Even they can barely recall coherently how it all came about. These old-timers are now a decrepit, senile lot, sought out by VIPs to garland before the cameras of pressmen. Who cares what it was all about, now? Very few are interested in the details of the struggle for freedom. The British masters live on in doctored history books, villains who milked the country dry before being thrown out by Gandhi, Nehru and a handful of others.

Independence Day has been milked dry of its substance by our paranoid politicians. They have played the 'freedom struggle' card ad nauseum till no one wants to even hear about it anymore. No one wants to listen to a recording of Nehru's 'freedom at midnight' speech. I hadn't been born when India became 'free,' but I loved hearing the recordings that All India Radio used to play when I was young. I remember the tired old voice with the perfect Harrow diction saying the words that still echo down the corridors of Time: "…a moment comes - that comes but rarely in history - when we step out from the old into the new - when an age ends - and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India shall awake to new life… and freedom!" The man's triumph, his sense of achievement, comes through loud and clear.

But did they succeed, those Titans? Did they really manage to make us free? If so, free from what? From hunger? No way! Enough starve in modern India to belie that claim. From poverty? Tush! The poor are still with us, and, by the looks of things, are going to be around for a long time. Not productivity but re-productivity is high in India. Don't be surprised if the ranks of your countrymen swell daily. The relentless increase in the country's population ensures that economic growth (if any) is effectively neutralized.

True, there are more and more swanky cars from abroad clogging the streets of every town and city, cars we need like a hole in the head. There is, therefore, more atmospheric pollution. Cellphone usage shows a rising trend as airtime rates nosedive. But Indians are already famous for more talk, less work. The man who wanted to reverse that unfortunate tendency died in a plane crash. It would have been interesting to see what Sanjay did to live up to his ideals. He was the angry young man of modern India, born to power and perfectly capable of using it. Alas! It was not to be…

There are more designer dresses, more foreign labels and more imported lingerie and cosmetics for the ladies. Indians eat better now, thanks to more KFC and Macdonald's outlets. But I hope you ain't worried, pardner. It's an unmistakable sign of progress. India, too, has gone global. It's a beautiful world full of swadeshi people in designer saffron. Don't ya worry none, honey, Dubyaman is here. So is Colin Powell. Only here we call him George Fernandes. The gods are firmly put in their place and all's well with the world… except that the poor of India are still slaves, ground into the dust, like always, by crushing poverty and inequity that no written Constitution can eliminate. There has never been an age when absolute cynicism has had such a field day, nor has it found happier stamping grounds than those afforded by 'free' India.

Lincoln's great insight - the one that propelled him into a career in Law - was that one's freedom ended where another's began. I think Honest Abe would have had a lot of surprises coming to him if he'd tried to learn law here. He'd have ended up learning that one man's freedom really starts where he encroaches on his neighbour's freedom or demolishes those of his countrymen. And I'm not just talking as simplistically as those who still rave and rant at the way the scooter mechanics and the chaat-wallahs have taken over the (yawn!) pavements, with pot-bellied cops looking the other way. For a fee, of course. No one cares anymore. No one bothers. Anyone trying to point out this breach of his freedom will be asked to keep walking. It ain't healthy for crusaders no more, mister. Keep goin', like they told Rambo…Shivanis and Tehelkas are a lesson learnt…you can't fight the establishment. Do-gooders are not popular. There is too much patronage by the powers-that-be, too much money is at stake.

There's no end to it in sight. From Kargil coffins to petrol pump Pandora's boxes, all parties have an almost identical pattern of approaching the stern duty of feathering their own nests. Allotment imbroglios and suchlike are badges of merit, proudly worn by parties in power. They signify a new confidence, broadcast that they've got the hang of how things work around here. History repeats itself. Politicians are the same the world over, only more so in India. Old wine in old bottles…

Perhaps the lesson to be learnt here is that no one can make you free, you have to do it yourself. It's got to be a DIY job, under the circumstances. No Constitution, no law, no judiciary can free you, when even innocent ladies in cars are gunned down by police on the plea that they thought they were robbers. Something smells in Denmark…

So let's see what someone like Aditya Patankar does, in such a situation. In the University of Delhi in the late sixties, there were a lot of hairy fellows around, fast… I mean, really fast. On two wheels. Motorcyclists. And Aditya Patankar was the King, the fastest of them all. I rode with him, I should know. Go ahead, read about it. Many before you have liked his way of freeing himself. Maybe you will, too...

I Rode with Patankar

An update: Well over a year back, I spotted an article on him in one of the Sunday supplements. It seems he has been making spectacular television documentaries for National Geographic Channel, in partnership with one Mark Shand, who shares his passion for an Indian elephant called Tara. When I last bumped into him (in Connaught Place nearly twenty years ago), he held a well-used Nikon F2. He had been in a tearing hurry and the few moments we had, on the sun-baked flagstones, were mainly devoted to squeezing the life out of each other.

I did not recognize either of the tanned, fit, but middle-aged and balding filmmakers in the picture that went with the article. Obviously, the olive-skinned one was Aditya; I remembered his infectious, dimpled smile, the wild, untrammeled spirit… and the hair-raising lift I once hitched from him to CP (that's Connaught Place to the uninitiated). I had little idea what I was letting myself in for.

He rode a CZ Jawa, a fast, temperamental motorcycle popular with the university crowd over thirty years ago. I had barely mounted the pillion when the bike seemed to shoot out of Allnutt Gate like a bullet, tilted at an impossible angle. I remember almost falling off in that first shattering burst of acceleration. The nightmare had begun.

Going up the Ridge, the throttle seemed to be stuck at the farthest limit. The engine was wailing deliriously with only an occasional, lightning gear-change affording it brief respite. I clung to the machine, as it swayed and vibrated, with an iron grip born of sheer terror.

He rode as if all the hounds of hell were after us. I shut my streaming eyes after the chilling discovery that the 'picket fence' on the left was actually a sedate procession of well-spaced electric-supply poles. My breakfast was dying to get off. Secretly, so was I.

Life seemed to a mélange of exhaust-boom, vicious acceleration, cruel braking, unrelenting centrifugal forces and nausea. Just when I had reconciled myself to an early demise, the machine slowed and jolted to a halt. The tortured engine wound its way down the octaves and died, grumbling in basso profundo. I got off shakily. I was alive!

My watch had stopped, no doubt in lieu of my heart. It was the ride of a lifetime…it was a lifetime. The present one is a bonus, a gratuitous second round. Every day is a precious gift… courtesy Aditya Patankar. I'm glad he's still at his old game of showing people how to live.

Postscript: After college, I got myself a Jawa, but it felt all wrong, and I switched to another make; mere transportation minus transport. I realized, sadly, that a song is nothing without the singer.
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