Bandh- Stop That!

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Ravia Gupta

Early to bed, early to rise, is what my mom insisted upon and I, too, like an obedient child, happily added this in my lifestyle. At around 5:30 am just when my alarm started to ring, I started to fight with the first devil attack of the day. To get up in the morning is not an easy one!Get up, get going or to take it easy and continue to dream for some more time is the challenge. And guess what? I won yet again to get up and get going…get going for a morning walk first, a shortcut to a healthy breakfast meal, making my way through the narrow lanes of a small town, chaotic traffic, just wishing for a few more minutes to be at my side and finally making it on time for work at dot 9:30 am.An empty parking lot with just a few men around, kept me thinking if I was too early or I was out to work on a public holiday. Within no time I got to know it was neither of the two. It was a ‘bandh’, meaning ‘closed, a general or a routine strike in our case. Now, this one surely is a powerful means of civil disobedience, which has a huge impact on the local community and is considered to be a much-feared tool of protest.So, what to do now is the next big question, more work or no work? Certainly, ‘no work’ is what I thought, like the way it used to happen when I was in school in Jammu almost a decade ago. How joyful we used to be when there used to be a call for ‘bandh’, especially on a day of class test or any exam. Happily we used to return home when school bus skipped to pick us up and play all-day around without any baggage of class work or home work.All thanks to political parties like Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a few traders and transporters organisations etc for keeping alive the ritual of ‘shut down’ and competing with states infamous for its bandhs like West Bengal and completely ignoring a state like Gujarat that works round-the-clock, besides what’s the need, after all we love to enjoy the ‘special state status’.But things have changed for sure. I am no more a naïve student and work is worship for me and most certainly for others too. To be punctual is what I have been taught over the years by my parents, teachers and now fellow colleagues and seniors too. Now, when I aim to shape the future of the nation, it hurts to see history repeating. It is disappointing to see my students also go through the same narrow lanes of life even after a decade of reforms, education, enlightenment etc. Sadly, we spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down, shut up and last but not the least to shut down!

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