Independence day

Today is 15th August 2008 , 61st independence day of our country, a day which fills every heart with the patriotic fervor, and considering myself to be quiet patriotic (though I am a strong critique of India as a nation too) I expected myself to be overwhelmed by this feeling too. But when I got freedom from the shackles of sleep quiet early today (effect of independence day I guess) no such sentiments were present. In fact ,It was the newspaper on seeing which I recalled what was the occasion for which I had got an off on friday. (Last friday was an off too, though it was due to oversleep) There was no urge to watch the flag hoisting ceremony's telecast from Red fort. Even when i picked the newspaper and was glancing through "delhi times", the pic printed on the first page of it with girls from some college boasting tricolor painted on their hands, appeared hypocritical to me. Instead of checking out what it symboloises I was more interested in checking out those who were trying to symbolise something, though I had to face a double disappointment--as the girls were not good enough to deserve a front page shot and my patriotic sentiments were not strong enough to overcome attraction of opposite sex. The day passed with me gripped by the old captor, sleep, couple of times while I tried unsuccessfully to fight for my own freedom on both the occassions. Then came evening and while swaping channels I suddenly came across some doordarshan channel which was airing live telecast of indian boxer Akhil kumar's olympic fixture. (for me stucking to doordarshan and giving it even a look for more than 30 sec has the probability of 1 in million i guess, but who knows i had already changed channels 999,999 times without landing on doordarshan and it was the millionth change). Though i give damn about boxing (which is expected when your violent apetite had been met by ,much more entertaining, no holds bar matches of WWE ,since childhood) but the partiotic vivek woke up inside me and I watched the whole match (no matter if it just lasted for 10-15 min only) and even cheered for akhil and was overjoyed when he clinched the match from the world champion russian ,who was so disgraced at the loss that he could not control his tears (it was terrible to see that they considered indian opponents in such a way), with it the indian boxer and the hopes of second medal reached the quarter finals. Few hours later I started watching the opening ceremony of beijing olympics, while seeing it the only thought which was running through my mind was, what can be done to make the opening ceremony of commonwealth games scheduled in delhi next yera to be more spectacular than the one in front of my eyes. A thought which was mocked by me a day back, had become a deep desire. I think I had gone banana for few hours as I had forgot about the utility of my engineering skills (or the absense of it) and was thinking of becoming a contributor to the growth of india's prowsess. (Its not that , that i dont want to rather the question is, with practically absent research acumen it was impossible for me to contribute much). Now with the sunset the nationalist me subsided and the real "me" gained conscious,I was able to figure out the whole sceanrio. I thought that such a day deserves to be typed down, when events sparked by random channel surfing woke up the patriot inside me and took him to the highest flight of imagination (srry for lifting the slogan but it appeared apt). But in the end I still feel that I will be slightly more patriotic than what I was yesterday.
I think it has extended a bit longer and particularly with clock striking 12 the whole point of using the words like"today" has changed, any ways JAI HIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!