CHOOSING ONE OVER THE OTHER

Huzza! I’m out. I’ll be fine you zooterkins. Rejected by you, the ‘illuminati tribe’ of social media, I still walk proud though you make me feel like your latest fopdoodle. Thwack! You wallop me with your critique! You troll me. I’m deleting my account from your social online ‘friend-web.’ My cardinal sin is ‘resistance.’ I beg your forgiveness, dear armchair patriots.

Heroes are heroes anyway! You want me to join your league? I shall qualify as a nation loyalist only if I wear a ‘TEE SHIRT’ of my country’s martyr and withhold patronage to the ‘global insignia’ of another country’s revolutionary. They are neither apples nor oranges. Heroes anytime anywhere don’t need crutches. Dear ‘screen revolutionaries’ your mental hacks on skewed patriotism don’t work. Reject me! Reject Democracy!

I could never choose one over the other. If I had a photo gallery of heroes, I don’t know whose ivory photo frame would find more space, whose portrait would be garlanded with a fuller bunch of roses?

One’s visage had always held me captive. The other had a power packed ‘electric’ persona to become the second sun. Both sent me on an emotional drill. Both were like glow worms illuminating dark corners. Both gave me a reason to dream beyond my comforts and live for something bigger. I genuflect to the memory of both ‘revolutionary souls’ Ernesto Che Guevara and Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. The former was a great figure of the Cuban Revolution and the latter executed at age 23 remains a ‘folk hero’ of Indian hearts ‘lionized’ in history, art and literature as a socialist revolutionary.

No moral compass could ever tell me who’s mine and who’s not. One from my land and the other executed by members of the Bolivian army on another side of the Atlas. It wasn’t in my geometry to pin one down with a compass needle while forming a halo or a ‘homage paying circle’ around the other. 

 Your media post was ludicrous. You were training me to be Swadeshi (for the country) on new lines. You wanted me to ‘LIKE’ and comment on the group update. It was a picture ‘FLASHING A RED TICK MARK AS APPROVAL’ on a tee shirt with Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh’s face and a ‘RUDE BIG BLACK CROSS’ on the second tee, a ‘NO NO’ on Guevara’s pixilated image. Poor Guevara! You make it sound like he’s been the worst abuser of your human rights. He lived for the man on the street.  Immeasurable is my chalice of respect  for Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. I try to resist and there’s a string of comments against me (like disapproving grandparents rethinking their will). For a tee, seriously!

You ostracize me! I’m no longer a part of your ‘Smartphone’ community. They are heroes not terrorists! 

Guevara’s iconic photograph taken by Alberto Korda seems to smile at me. As for my homeland hero Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh, I hold him tight in an ancient sepia photograph pressed to my heart.