THE FACELESS HEROES

In India one can see a lot of things. However, one of the most common things one sees are waves of students. Students marching towards the gates of an educational institution or away from it. The urban type clad in their jeans and t-shirts with their out-of-the-bed hairstyle (there are rumors that it is popular among girls, although I wouldn’t know…) along with the ones who find themselves in these giant metropolitans having arrived from smaller towns or outright villages who are more humbly dressed and trying to stay in fashion wearing modern clothes of apparently someone else’s size along with their well oiled hair. The urban ones with their eyes giving away the effect of the pints of the previous night and the villagers with their bespectacled eyes emanating the “thousand yard stare” trying to hide their well “programmed” dreams of becoming successful public servants, engineers, doctors or software professionals. They are the students of India. The students who walk on in countless and endless hordes. The students who are all protagonists of their stories. Who will change everything. Who dream of great things they will achieve through studying medicine or engineering. The ones who carry on the dreams of their humble, but strict parents. The ones who were born as a hope. The ones who would bring greatness to a till now “ungreat” family.

However, to others they are faceless entities that construct these hordes. To those very students the other ones are faceless extras whose part in the movie is anything but important. They form the POPULATION (in all caps) of our country. They are the ones who are the example of what hopes sans education can do. Education of the right kind. Because in India very educated people behave more or less as their uneducated compatriots. They all want offspring. The offspring that will change all. That will become a part of the endless horde one day. I have even heard the Indian “educated” telling me that their children will not be a problem for the country because they will be the “right children”. Why? Because unlike many others they will be educated. Like their parents. They will be the protagonists of the faceless hordes.

I do not really know if I believe in God. Or any similar force. I do not know if such force exists. However after observations like the ones above, one thing, possibly out of my religious and cultural conditioning. comes out of my heart: God, save my country. It has too many faceless heroes.

–Madhuvan Rishiraj