Heroes

2nd April 2011. That's the day when the gross total happiness in this world would have been at its highest. That's when India won the world cup. I have never seen so many people so happy together. To put it in Ravi Shastri's words, the streets were jam packed and the atmosphere electric. There was a wave of nationalism and the usual chants of "Bharat Mata ki Jai". Of course, being in Hyderabad, I was witness to a couple of bizarre slogans of "Jai Telengana" and "Jai Shri Ram"!

5th April 2011. Anna Hazare went on fast unto death to force the government to commit to civil (non-political) representation in committee drafting the Anti-Corruption bill, a committee which has fair representation for some of the most corrupt politicians of the nation. For once, there is a sense of unity amongst the people on a cause (Of course, Arundhati Roy and her band of social reformers are missing from the scene. And why shouldn't they be, Anna Hazare is not out on an armed rampage to prove his point). In recent times, this kind of unity is surpassed only by the one I described in the above paragraph.

Now, when the country hails our cricket team as heroes, I see them as nothing more than creations of the media/advertisers to encash the elated feelings of the people when the people project the team's success as their own. While on the other hand, today, Anna Hazare to me is the personification of the pain that most people feel and want to act against but just don't know how. More importantly, his actions give us hope that there might yet be things that can be done to prevent the moral fabric of our society from completely disintegrating. I pray, more than I did for the Indian team to win the world cup, that Anna Hazare is successful in his cause. Our cause. Because, for me, he is a real hero. A hero by choice, not by chance.