Yesterday my bus home was stopped to allow a peaceful candlelight procession against Delhi's gangrape pass; and sitting silently inside a well-lit bus, watching those young men and women (may be they were just girls and boys a week ago, but now they have grown up) walk with determination holding placards and candles, I was filled with pride. Pride for being in a nation where there is still hope. Pride that our youth have come on to streets for something worthwhile, for a girl they have never seen, never heard of till now, never even know her name, and who lives far far away in a city most of them have never visited. Pride that till now I had watched youth coming onto streets for freedom or any other just cause in other countries, watched with envy that it may not happen in our country riddled with corruption, but it did. And I feel contented. I feel it will change the course of our nation, soon. I thought people would talk for some days, argue on TV channels over the need for a 'stringent' law, and then move on... and the girl would be all alone in her trauma. I am surprised pleasantly surprised. I don't know what will happen to the case, but this is a start for change in the country.
'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares?
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