Songs (Verse 292, Stray Birds, 1916. R. Tagore) for my Country as posted by Saad Bin Jung (a old Hyderabadi)

Nine decades ago, even before India had her independence, a genius peeped into the future, and sent us a warning that would stay with us till eternity. 

Please read this again. And again. Every line is relevant in the present and will be relevant for the tomorrow unless we do what is required - become India.

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Every word is written for today. And now read this - for every Indian needs to be resolute.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

India will never lose its secular fabric, our head might 

get bloody but it will forever be unbowed, 

as every one of is, when push comes to shove, 

the master of our fate and the captain of our soul.

Clouds come floating into my life, 

no longer to carry rain or usher storm, 

but to add color to my sunset sky 

================

Jai hind.

(Source- Via Gp e-mail from A Sunder Rajan, Army Veteran)