"Something troubling you, ma?" I asked, looking at my mother and also the mother of more than a billion and a quarter who were part of her offspring."

And then I watched as the mother of over a billion looked at the calendar furtively, "I don't think I'll rest till the 4th of June!" she said sadly.

"Why are you so scared, mother?" I asked.

"The last two months have been terrible," wept Mother India, "The most cutting words were used, and politicians came down to the level of street fighters, even going to the extent of demeaning the Father of the Nation, and today I fear for some of my own children as I see them discriminated by other children of mine!"

"You're crying Mother India!" I whispered, horrified to see my mother cry.

"Yes, my son! What pains a mother the most is when she sees her children pitted against each other, with some of my children being told I belong only to them. What hurts a mother the most is when she sees the blood of an offspring flowing because of the violence of another she considers her own!"

"Yes!" I whispered, "This is happening!"

"All my children are one! There is no child of mine who can claim to be a majority or is sidelined as a minority! How can there be a division among sisters and brothers?"

"And you feel the 4th of June would bring a change?"

"On that day, it will either be the beginning of more hatred and anger enforced again by some children of mine, or there could be a diffusing of all that has been infused among my sons and daughters in the last ten years!"

"I hope and pray your children have been wise Mother India!" I whispered.

"I was wrested from the British over seventy years ago, and given my freedom! A freedom that is precious, and most of you are children of a free me! Keep me that way, not bound and fettered again to the liking of any one particular group!"

"You are mother to all of us!"

"Yes! Yes!" whispered the mother of over a billion and a quarter, "I am the mother to all who I have spawned and not just to some! Please let that message reach each of my children; that nothing, not their faith, their colour, caste or creed makes them less of a child of mine.

All that matters is that they are umbilically bound to me!

Yes, you are bound to me, my children and I to you, whatever others might say, and those cords cannot be stretched, torn or broken by anyone who thinks they are more special than any of my other children! Remember this, whatever happens on the 4th of June!"

Pay heed to her call, oh ye children of India..!