Not a shallow victory

The naysayers may be shaking their heads in mock dismay. But Anna Hazare cleared the fence yesterday. He smashed a sixer drowning the celebration of Dhoni and his IPL team. KKR and the government have one thing in common. The tag of underachievers sits easy on both of them.

The cynics would have us believe there is more to this victory than meets the eye. Maybe there is. Maybe it is not as simple and straight forward as it looks. Maybe as the whispers go, Anna Hazare is nothing more than a pawn in the hands of someone more powerful who’s pulling the strings. My response to all this negativity is so what?

As things unfolded in the past few days, it wasn’t left to a frail old man fasting in the capital and his band of initial supporters to champion the cause of a cleaner system and to put an end to corruption. You and I were part of it too. The nation joined in with a hitherto unknown frenzy. We can question the mob hysteria with all the irony at our disposal. Was it really an uprising as the television channels painted it out to be or was it just a ‘comic revolution of an obsolete man’ as the editor of a popular weekly called it. We can go on arguing till the cows come home without the two sides reaching a consensus. But does any of that really matter.

For me, what happened in the last few days is nothing short of remarkable. Not because I ever believed this one movement would put an end to the malaise of corruption. Or that the Lok Pal bill is going to achieve this feat. All we managed together as a nation was to get a feudal political party and a corrupt government to climb down from their high horse and engage them in an eye ball to eye ball contest. They blinked first. I woke up this morning feeling triumphant about that.

No one bribed me or misled me to be part of this movement. I was aware of its limitations and I didn’t expect things to change miraculously at the end of it.

There is a long road ahead but I am prepared to walk on it now. I don’t care whether the man who started it all will be with me on this journey. I am prepared to walk alone if it comes to that.

I am committed to nail each and every lie that Manmohan Singh and his ministers come up with in the future. In my own way. Through my writings, through discourses and debates, through songs that would be sung and dreams that would be dreamt. I am as committed to do this with any other government, any other party that will succeed this one.

I am going to do my damndest to ensure the country in which my son transitions to adulthood is cleaner, has less corruption than the country in which I turned into an adult. And being part of every confrontation, every movement that leads to this.

That much is enough for me. More than enough.