I saw a small group of protesters outside the tech park last morning. And as I walked towards the company building, I heard receding slogans of 'Anna Hazare Zindabad'. I kept walking like the others, pretending that the sound stirred nothing in me. I thought about protests and revolutions in general, wondering about how the present age has enabled us highly for such things, while surreptitiously taking away from us what it takes to actually participate in them. I doubt my convictions. I doubt if something done with a good intention is necessarily good. I doubt if such things ever bring about a change at the micro level. What, for example, is the freedom that we fought so passionately for? Wasn't it just a shift of power from one group of people to the other? The more I look at revolutions, the more I see a disappointing pattern of dictatorships replaced by oppressive fanaticism, monarchies by pseudo democracies, and so on. And even though things change, I wonder if they ever change for the better. And yet, it's in the nature of the human to fight for a future that always seems brighter. Sometimes I wonder if we, our convictions, our perceptions, our governments and our revolutions are just reagents meant to help achieve a certain equilibrium of chaos.
Yet, individual freedom is something too precious to be kept silent about. May be what we do will be nothing but glorious chapters in history books, may be it will change nothing, but that glory, that story is worth creating. And possibly, it will bring about a difference, a minute part of which will be positive.
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