The military pomp and pageantry always raise a lump in my throat, perhaps due to my own social conditioning, or maybe genuine emotion of patriotic fervour. The fly-past this time was spectacular. I saw the Dakota my dad flew during the 1971 war. It must have taken some planning, and precision flying. Very impressive.
But we really need to stop the ‘cultural’ part of the Republic Day parade. The plasticky tableaus, loud music and song, school-level dancing, unnecessarily bright costumes, garish colours, PoP structures are extremely tacky (as they always have been) and getting tackier every year. The renovated ‘Central Vista’, the multicoloured laser lighting, the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the Beating Retreat, the extinguishing of the ‘eternal’ flame, the holographic projection, the doing away with inviting a respected international Chief Guest, and that man with his faux Netaji topi on the dais…it’s all just too much. Even earlier, never liked this part. And maybe it worked in the early independence decades. But now, don’t even ask.
Loud. Garish. Tacky. Kitschy.
And unfortunately, representative of the true Indian aspirations, which are closer to a Sooraj Bharjatiya production than one would be strictly comfortable with, combined with every bit of wannabeness of a Karan Johar film, and having all the production quality of the Ramayana/Mahabharata serials on Doordarshan in the 1980s and 90s.
Just. Cringe.
P.S: Just got the perfect word to describe the ‘cultural’ program we just witnessed: ‘Pre-Internet’. Yep. That’s it. The whole presentation was so last century. Which is approximately by when we should have stopped the practice.
