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

There's only one piece of poetry that reverberates in my mind on all three national holidays in India. Be it The Republic Day, The Independence Day or Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday, one poem I learnt in school is the only thing that keeps playing in the back of my mind - Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful "My Country Awake".

My Country Awake

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.