YOU 'ARE' AN EAGLE... YOU 'ARE' BORN TO SOAR
Pic.: Prashant Bhat
Once again, I wish to write, today, on Narendra Modi. It is
not for his party or politics. It is for the inspiring story he has scripted
for all of us to read.
Modi is 64. He was born
in a grocers’ family, which belonged to the backward community of oil-pressers
in Vadnagar, Gujarat . As a child, he helped
his father sell tea at Vadnagar railway station. Later, as a teenager, he ran a
tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus... He went to a local school
and, later, completed his graduation and post-graduation, in Political Science,
through distance education... That’s was the theory of politics. His practical
studies in politics started as an ordinary ‘Pracharak’
in RSS... and, that’s where he honed his shrewd organizational and leadership
skills...
Modi has been the Chief
Minister of Gujarat since 2001 (Four
terms!)... And, during this long tenure, he has seen the best and worst alike...
The accusations, legal tangles and isolation over Ghodra riots were, perhaps, the
most harrowing tests of his life... But, he passed all of them... The merciless
onslaught by media, too, couldn't subdue the fighter in him... The US banned
him from entering its land... It hardly made any difference to his swelling
popularity...What he believed in was in delivering what he had promised... “Minimum
government; maximum governance,” as he repeatedly described. So, he brought the
best of the industries to Gujarat , put his
state on the global map as far as development was concerned...
The road from Gujarat
to Delhi – from
CM to PM – is simply awe-inspiring!
Modi is the
quintessential self-made man... worth admiring and emulating. If an ordinary
citizen of my country – who had no one around him to pull strings for him...
who had everything against him as far as status in Society was concerned... who
had to maneuver his way - all the way to
top - through a galaxy of stalwarts in his own party and an endless line-up of
hawks from outside his party... yes, if the boy who sold tea near a railway station
could rise to become the ruler of my country, then, I call this land - my
country - a true democracy...
For a democracy to
thrive, its people should hope, believe in their true potentials... They must
know who they really are... Yes, like Narendra Modi did...
One
day, on his way to the farm, a farmer found an abandoned eagle's nest. He saw
in it an egg still warm. He took the egg to his farm and laid it in the nest of
one of his hens. Soon, the egg hatched and the baby eagle began to grow up along
with the other chickens. All though the day, just as little chickens around it
did, the little eagle pecked about the farmyard, scrabbling for grain. This
way, it spent its whole life within the yard... never even, for once, looking
up unto the skies.
Then, one day, when it was very
old, it lifted up its head and saw high up in the skies a breath-taking sight...
A mighty bird was soaring with great power and grace, up there...
“Who is he?” the old-and-tired
eagle – who did not know who really he was – asked and elderly hen.
“He is Eagle,” explained the
wise-old hen, “the king of all birds, the one who rules the skies.”
“I wish I were born like him,”
said the eagle-among-the-chickens,” I wish I could soar like an eagle!”
The legend has it that the
wise-old hen, that day, had yelled, angrily: “Brother, you ‘are’ an Eagle, and
you ‘are’ born to soar... Go, fly!”
If only,
each one of us, here on this land, knew who we, really, were!
GERALD D’CUNHA
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