independent together

Daivik was reporting the Independence Day celebration they had in his school recently. “The teacher unfurled the flag, flowers fell from it, we sang the song and then there was party”. As I was listening in, I started wondering what his concept of independence might be. “What is independence day, Daivik”, I asked him. “Appa, that is the day we became independent”, he said. “But what is independence?” I persisted. He explained it with eagerness, “It is being able to do what you want to”, and if that was not clear enough, he continued, “see, if you want to go somewhere, like the street corner, you can just go. So you are independent”. Okay, that was clear enough, I said to myself. But he was in a mood to continue and changed the direction a bit. “But I cannot go wherever I want to, so I’m not independent”, he was saying. Hmmm, this was reaching an inflection point with multiple possible trajectories. Which way was it going to go, should I do some pre-empting? Turned out, Daivik knew exactly how to steer it.  “Even though I cannot go wherever I want”, he continued, “I can tell you where I want to go and you can take me, so we are independent together”,  he finished.

That phrase – independent together – stuck me and instantly offered multiple interpretations and threatened to drag me down its bountiful possibilities. We were in a bus at that point. I laid my arms around his shoulders and let the rhythms of the wheels take over and reveled for a few moments in the awesome simplicity and the pristine beauty of that phrase.

We were together at that moment, and definitely independent !