Happy Birthday my dear Bapu ji,
I do not know whether next year I will be able to call you as Bapuji or we will start calling you as Grand Bapu ji. I am told that like Vascodagama discovered India, another American has discovered a new Bapu ji for our country.
But even earlier, with your stick, round glasses and a watch hanging from your waist, you looked only like a Grand Bapu ji all these days. We see that Grandparents need not be given the same respect as our parents.
My own father used to say that the name of ‘Father of the Nation’ given to you was wrong because the nation was there even before you were born. He used to say that you should have been called only a Great Son of this Bharatha matha like Chatrapathi Sivaji or Bhaghat Singh or Nethaji or many other great such sons. I do not know why then some new father was discovered now. It is confusing. I don’t know whether next year onwards we will have to study some new chapters from ‘Experiments with Truth’, by the new Bapuji. I hope that I will not get confused between both chapters and get low marks.
Because if I get low marks, my teacher will scold me and my parents. In school, we are not to give respect to our Father or mother. There only Teacher and Principal know everything. Even our father or mother are only to obey the Teacher or Principal. Even if I have doubts in the lessons, I should only go for tuition to my teacher. I should not ask my parents. They do not know anything in my books.
But Father of the Nation is to be respected. I think it is because there is no Teacher of the Nation or Principal of the Nation.
But I was told by one of my teachers that you were a bad father because your Son did not like you. The teacher also told us that you were very cruel to your wife. Then I don’t know why they called you Father of the Nation. What is the position of the newly discovered Father of the Nation, I do not know. Perhaps in the next year, the teachers will tell me about that.
I think you were very much interested in sweeping the streets. Everywhere I see your photo with a broom stick and your spectacles. But I feel you failed to make the streets clean. Might be that is why they called you ‘Father of the Nation’. In our house whenever my mother sweeps, it becomes clean. When my father sweeps, he just makes a show, as if he is helping my mother.
I see your face on all the currency notes of our Country also. I have heard people saying something about “Gandhi Account’. I do not know if this photo and the account are related. I also do not know whether your photo will be replaced by the photo of the new Father. Two or three years back I remember my father going to some bank every day to get some new rupee notes. I do not know why he was going every day. But he came back late and my mother quarreled with him saying he had not gone to bank but to some other place in the name of changing notes. I do not understand why they were quarrelling. If the photo in the notes are changed will my father have to go to banks again and my mother will start quarrelling again? I am afraid thinking about that.
For fancy dress competitions we were able to have less expense to be dressed up like you. Now if there is a new Bapu ji, I do not know if we will be able to dress up like that so easily.
What all will change, I do not know. I have been discussing this with my friends also. All of us are afraid that we will lose a holiday on which we need not come to school, because you may not be our Bapu ji any more. Even on Independence Day and Republic Day they want us to come to school. But my friends also feel that we will get that holiday on the Birthday of the new Bapu ji.
Othewise Bapu ji, we will very badly miss you.
Lovingly,
A Student of 7th Standard.
A Student of 7th Standard.
