A Unique Day

 November 26, or 26/11 as it is popularly known, is indeed a unique day. In India, it is celebrated as the Constitution Day. It was on this very day in 1950, the Indian Constitution was released. Its Preamble, which I had tried quite unsuccessfully to be included in the Compulsory English syllabus, once autonomy set in, can be considered the sum total of the entire treatise. Citizens who are not very fond of Social Sciences/Humanities, to which category most people belong, can read the one-page Preamble to get the gist of Indianness.

The day takes us back to the horrible attack on Mumbai by Ajmal Kasab and his gang. The sad saga, the sacrifices by the police, by the para-military forces, by the commandoes, by the Taj/Trident employees, by the Jewish inmates of the Chabad House, and the common man, with the famous Mumbai spirit, all deserve our deep  remembrances. A sad chapter in the history of post-independence India, it tragically, and, may be, maliciously, took place on the Constitution Day. 

This year, 26/11 turned out to be the tithi commemorating the Sanjeevan Samadhi of Sant Dnyaneshwar, a great philosopher-poet whose writings changed the course of the history of Maharashtra and of Marathi. The Bhakti Literature as well as Sampradaya/Sect owe their very inception to this great thinker. No wonder, he is known as the Emperor of Spiritual Enlightenment.

Obviously celebrated in various, mostly merely populist, ways, this unique day, too, ended with the latest excitement haunting the media of all types; namely, 'Kaun banega Maharashtra ka Mukhya Mantri, the C.M.?'

Pratima@For me, 26/11 has a sad association.

To begin with, the date '26' is the day Aai passed away in March, 2021. Every 26, I keep a fast in her memory, as on every 21, in Papa's. Tough to believe how time flies away at a supersonic speed.

As for 26/11, Manu, our cat, almost tore off my right arm and both hands on that day. She was hardly eighteen months old. Her mother had just left her, a kitten who was hardly three days old, in our home. Literally saved her from certain death.

 God alone knows what happened to her, but Ajmal was attacking people in the CST, and here she was mauling me most viciously as if possessed. According to the mavashi, who used to clean our vessels then, it was an Amavasya, the no-moon-night! I still have the marks of those  wounds, both physically and psychologically!