If you didn't see the glass marbles in her eyes, you could easily believe Free India was still alive!

There is no good way of sharing bad news, so let me rip the band-aid off without further ado.

There is little of substance left in India's freedom. Whatever will happen on Independence Day is merely and strictly a pantomime. All the set pieces will be in place. The vast grounds of the Lal Qila will be teeming with youngsters assembled from schools and colleges. NCC or Bharat Scouts & Guides uniforms will be freshly ironed. Other kids will wear tricolor livery and sit in orderly rows to reveal the colours of the Tiranga when the drone cameras hover overhead. Excitable anchors, swept up in paroxysms of patriotic apoplexy, will go breathless in their search for new and even more soaring metaphors for the many-splendoured joys of our Azadi. All these will be no more than opening acts, of course, because the real star act for the morning, all 56 inches of chest, designer apparel, dazzling shahtoosh shawl and yards of turban topped off with perky tura, will stride up next, and launch into his endless ramble about deshbhakti, atmanirbharta, swabhiman, vikas and, as I learned just a short while ago, "partition horrors". He will then allude breezily to how we, the people of India, ably assisted by all the clods and incompetents who preceded him in the prime minister's office, have failed him. And how, despite our feebleness and incompetence, he is back at work, bearing the weight of all 135 crores of us upon his divine shoulders, much as Lord Krishna held aloft the Govardhan Parvat.

The anchors, given all the time he consumes with his tirade, will rush back, their laudatory paeans to the incarnate lord all ready, to flatter the grand panjandrum. The NOIDA brigade will shower their visionary, dynamic, fearless, towering plaudits, which will, of necessity, be punctuated at metronomic frequency with choice expletives for anybody and anything which still opposes or dissents. Successes will be appropriated from far and wide (Neeraj, Bajrang, Sindhu, Lovalina, the Hockey teams, having featured in the morning ramble, will now appear live on channels to reaffirm their gratitude and undying loyalty).

That, briefly, is tomorrow's news today. 

In this orgiastic bacchanal, we will be expected to collectively incinerate all the wounds, agonies and malignancies visited on India's body and spirit, since 2014. Most grievous of all? We will be expected to clap and cheer full-throated, as we watch the life force our freedoms; of our democratic republic; dissipate into an steel-grey, grief wracked sky. 

The great taxidermist will walk back, well pleased with himself. Free India will have become the finest trophy to be mounted on the walls of his swish new palace, in the necropolis of central vista.