The year 2084 A few days back I went home to attend The Hindu Lit for Life, though my father would be the most liberal person you would meet in matters that are deemed bad by most parents told me not to attend the event as he thinks that The Hindu is left-leaning and openly supports congress. Evidently, he wasn’t wrong, they had called Shashi Tharoor, P.Chidambaram and Jayanthi Natarjan the only political figures attending the three-day event and all three were from congress. Though he allowed me to attend the first day after a light argument, he got hold of the rest of the schedule at the end of it and he got to know that Kanhaiya kumar is having a session about “Is India ripe for a revolution” the next day. He got really pissed off and told me not to attend the session for obvious reasons about the latter. The argument between us would devolve into freedom of speech, the idea of nation, different separatist’s movements across India, and the idea of liberal democracy. At the end of it, though he was awestruck by the logic put-forth by me, he gave me a grim explanation which I didn’t debate against because what he was saying could actually become true. So, this is what he said – that I as an aspirant for a top post in the coming future shouldn’t be associated with any ideology and it would affect my chances of growth. And he added that people would even go to the extent of digging out the CCTV evidence of me attending an event organised by The Hindu to defame me. I was taken aback at this explanation, though my father haven’t read 1984 the concept he was talking about was “Thought-crime” and how just being to an event like this would lead me to having thoughts about different things would be considered a crime because it could be against the popular order of the day in coming years. He even told me that such people who discuss such things in a public forum would meet a grim fate. Though this was all a thought and purely fictional, the very idea that our country / people could regress into such a situation was scary and threatening the normal existence. This raises a bigger question for the youth like us who are going to be the future leaders of the country about the idea of free speech and expression. We should be wary about the policy decisions our governments take, the bans and censorships, the indoctrinations, etc. and we should make sure that our governments work towards protecting every tenet of democracy and not play along the thin line definitions of the constitution and the rights to impose things upon us. At the end of it, I believe it all boils down to ideology even at home and I often find my selves fighting with him about our ideologies more than anything else. So, don’t conform to any ideology even if it is your father’s. For the record, mine is to be humane at all times (not exactly the same as “Being Human”). Though I didn’t attend that session as I had to attend another session about being a food-blogger and critic, because maybe I did that to avoid confrontation with my father or maybe I actually did believe in his theory which is even worse and not knowing which one gives me a shudder.