RDB …

Rang De Basanti .. a movie that is taking India by storm… You would have surely read enough and more blogs on this topic… You would have come across many comments on how good the movie is, how inspiring and how right… But I would like to raise a few questions.

Can a single incident ignite such a fire in the young minds?

Can a single incident cause the people to take such tough decisions and carry them out till the very end?

Is ONE SINGLE INCIDENT really that powerful??

Well, in my opinion, the answer is a Big NO. One incident may ignite the fire, but it will not carry me through! … Why? The answer is very simple… “Tomorrow is another day!”

Let me relate an incident to back this up. This happened last May, I had been to Alibaug with a few ‘strangers’, just for the heck of it. Amongst them was an acquaintance of mine Aditya, his friends and a French trio Stefan, Pierre and Lorainz (Lo).

It was a great trip and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was the last day and we were scheduled to visit two beaches before our return. On our way to these beaches, we went past a few villages, when Lo commented that “the rural India was the one which all foreigners considered to be ‘India’, which they came to watch ... and the Urban India was the one Indians wanted to project India as”. How true she is I thought, but Lo had not seen the worst yet. She was just having a look at the villages… the places - where the sun still shines down upon, where there are kids playing around, where there is Happiness.

It was 1515 hrs when we reached the last beach as per our plan. The time I cannot forget. I was the first to reach the shore, when I saw a man floating about 150 meters away from the shore. There was no hue or cry and so I thought that the man was just swimming and enjoying himself. A minute later, I heard a loud scream. I saw people were trying to swim out to that man … He was drowning … But there was no one capable of swimming against the tide (which was changing slowly towards the high tide). As the beach was a ‘public’ beach, there were no facilities, no life guard … NOTHING. We just stood there looking at the body bobbing up and down… up and down … tears welled up in my eyes… there was nothing I could do…and all of a sudden, Stefan and Pierre came out and asked me what the fuss was about. I had hardly finished explaining myself when Pierre dashed out into the sea and swam out to the man. He is a great swimmer… he is, but he was not strong enough to swim back to the shore and pull that man back with him.

Luckily, by then, a few of the men around had managed to get some rope and they set out towards Pierre and that man … they were slowly dragged back to the shore… All’s well right?? OH MY GOD! NO….this is where the problem starts…There are no Paramedics, there is this lady Doctor, who does not know a thing about first aid … No one who can offer a mouth to mouth … and I was one of them … I still did not know what to do.. I stood blankly and just cursing the ………………………..forget it ……………. Lo went and offered help… she gave some mouth to mouth resuscitation and tried her hand at giving first aid … but it was of no use… we got a jeep and sent that man to the nearest nursing home… only to be told that the nearest nursing home was over 10 km away and it is impossible for the man to survive… Amazing isn’t it?

That was the end of it. Lo could not take it any more… She walked to the shore and sat down amongst the waves. I went and sat next to her, to see how she was doing… We just sat still for a long time and then, we decided to leave the cursed beach. On the way back, Lo just said one thing… “Pierre, if you would not have been a good swimmer and you had tried to help, you would have ended up in the same state as that man. It was lucky that there were some other men who came to help you, else you were a goner too.” So simple isn’t it, there was no one to swim out to that drowning man because they knew that if they would get stuck, no one else would come to rescue them either!

I was burning…with shame, with remorse …I don’t know why… I felt that I was the one to be blamed. I could have probably learnt to give first aid if not swim… there was something I could have done right?! I promised myself to do a lot of things and to make sure that I would know what to do when I face another situation of the same sort.

We reached back to Mumbai… safe and sound… as Aditya took leave, he said “Arun, I know what you are going through, even I am going through the same … but trust me ‘TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY’ … Just forget everything... Life will continue as before” and almost 10 months later, as I write this…Life still continues to be the same… I know what I need to do on the beach… just be careful not to wander too far into the sea… cause who knows, there will be no Pierre who can drag me out!

The emotions that I went through that day, the fire that was ignited, I can never put into definite words, the fire lingers on, and shots up now and then, as it is right now! But again…. Tomorrow is just another day…

PS: Cheers to Piere, Lo and Stefan ... they were the heroes of the day ...