Let’s be honest. When you read and hear all those homilies today celebrating 78 years of freedom – from the top of this pink page or the ramparts of the Red Fort – you’re not really going to be thinking of freedom fighters or White people in black-and-white film reels, but of the value of the free-dom. Not liberation, emancipation, non-dependence – no, no, but the other variety of free-dom: that phenomenon where you can get something free. Don’t you believe the cynics – or the economists – when they say that there is nothing called a free lunch. Rubbish! When you’re standing in front of a spread of office samosas, biscuits and coffee that you’re not paying for, economic theories seem a bit academic, don’t they?
Even today, on Independence Day, despite it being a dry day, you must be going in the evening to a friend’s place – for drinks and khana that you won’t have to pay for. Ergo, free. The trick to enjoying a free lunch is to embrace the guilt-free delight of getting something for nothing. No need to consider that maybe the ‘tandoori treat’ could be the bait for yet another ‘team-building’ exercise. Or that a free I-Day gift will mean listening to a bureaucrat speak about the nation, or – god forbid – the future of this country. But free things do exist, even in an India’s generosity that is dependent on your credit worth and standing.
