Anna Hazare walks into history books

It's all happening at a frenzied pace. With just a few days more for the winter session of parliament to end, Anna team is pressing the hazard buttons harder, the Opposition is desperately muddying waters further to pounce on the last fish; media is haunting anybody termed a politician to air their views; columnists are squeezing in a few lines before the next drama begins...

Whatever happens in this Parliament session I’m not particularly worried (apart from a chunk of public money wasted yet again with nothing constructive to show for) because there’s a hero out there. No, not in Mariah Carey’s heart. In the hearts of millions of Indians.

Anna Hazare – the man you can either hate or love but cannot ignore.

The Grand Old Man of modern India is determined to run the course. How long it will take, only time will say for the Bill is just the first lap of the long marathon he has set on. It’s a long track out to thousands of village and city corners. But he has already carved a path – one into history books. I can see children naming his head on exercise sheets and mugging up his bio-data for exams.

If the two Indian of the Year awards he is conferred with is anything to go by, it’s just a matter of time when regional news channels will queue up propelling his move into the world of academics.

He simply deserves to be studied. For it's no mean feat to have aroused the collective conscience of the nation after six decades. To have shaken the masses and the classes equally is commendable. No wonder he needed the aid of two heroes. His provocative speeches many a times have not settled down well with me. A Gandhian cannot influence the electorate any one way, I believe. But guess that’s the Shivajinism needed to wake up hi-tech mortals from their conscious slumber.

However, I wonder where his impatience stems from. If the so-called powers that be did mention the winter session for the Bill, shouldn’t he have given them the space to act? Threats of fasts, debates, mud-slinging… all through were not called for. This is when I’m forced to believe reports in certain sections of the media about his “team calling the shots”. Definitely a person who has worked against odds and transformed his entire village will know better. Then why this rush?  Waited for 60 long years is the oft-repeated conclusion. No more time to be wasted!

So what happens if another session goes waste? Will Annaji fast a fourth time before the year ends? Well, it's just another week that we need to wait. Fast or protest, the Bill will see the light of the day, indeed. As for the fruits of the proposed Bill, it shouldn’t matter if it takes another 60 years to cleanse the nation, for the process for another first is begun. The world’s largest democracy hitherto is dusting its image clean!

So shouldn’t the architect of the ‘Largest Clean Democracy’ have a title? Hero is too frivolous. Modern-day Gandhi? -That’s ignoring his other role model Shivaji. Father of Modern India? – that’s the easy way out. Settle for Indian? Should we check with Kamal Hassan for the copyright?