THE TASK AHEAD ... 1

There is so much suffering in India and so much to do to mitigate it. Let us all feel for our brethren and serve each other with all our might. Today, this seems to be the path ahead of us as we struggle to build our nation. Free we are politically today but bound in hundred chains socially and economically with a bankruptcy of moral character that is debilitating the nation by the day. There is no point merely singing the glories of the past and wallowing idle in a memory which we care not to live out in our daily lives, although, awareness of such is of supreme moment, for out of the past are built pathways for the future running through the present. But the ideals must be made practical and realised in real life, and the thoughts given shape in deeds.

This is the need of the hour as the poor suffer from want and the rich suffer from surfeit and the middle class squeezed in between suffers from the pangs of smashed ideals, crumbling philosophy and crashing character. Morality murdered, life has become for most an exercise in cynicism with corruption corroding every aspect of national aspiration. Must we sit and weep then? No, we must not. We must manfully reorient our lives towards future fulfilment of our national aspirations and with it the attainment of true freedom for our billion-strong brethren who will then have the basic requirements of decent living for the furtherance of their evolution on earth. And to bring about this transformation, let us follow the golden words of Sri Ramakrishna : 'Serve jeeva (the sentient being) as Shiva (the Divine Being)'.

Vande Mataram! Hari Om Tat Sat!