Officially, the term ‘Day’ means a period of twenty-four hours reckoned from midnight to midnight. But traditionally we call the time between sunrise and sunset as a day. In Mahabharata, Arjuna swears that he would kill Jayadrath before the sun sets or else he would commit self-immolation. In fact he wanted to kill Jayadrath on that very same day and it was believed then that a day ends with the sunset. Even wars during those times started at sunrises and ended at sunsets.
‘Day’ also means “Good Times”. There is a proverb in Konkani language: “Some days are of daughter-in-law and some days are of mother-in-law”. This means that in everyone’s life there are periods of joys as well as sorrows. In the past, “Daughter-in-law’s days” meant hardships and vexation whereas “Mother-in-law’s days” meant enjoying supremacy. But now the times have changed and the new meaning of the above proverb is becoming opposite of the traditional one. In English language, the saying “Every dog has his Day” means that even in a dog’s life some moments of joy do occur.
In Hindi language day means ‘Din’ and the adage “Din ko raat kahana” means telling just opposite of what has actually happened. “Din dugna, raat chauguna” means that one has achieved greater success in shorter time. Presently “Achhe Din” of PM Modi has perplexed the whole nation. But I feel our PM should not be blamed for this. Modiji used to utter simply the words “Achhe Din” and then kept quiet for some moments. Then the huge gathering in front of him used to shout aloud “Anewale Hai”. So the people are to be blamed. Instead, they could have said, “Jane wale hai”!
The word ‘Day’ also means anniversary. From times immemorial, we celebrate the anniversaries of our different deities. Thus, we celebrate Ganesh Jayanti and Gokulashtami, the birthdays of Lord Ganesh and Lord Krishna respectively. We celebrate Christmas, Dusshera, Diwali. In accordance with the above tradition, we then started celebrating the days of great men and great events in history. Thus we celebrate August 15 and January 26 and we celebrate the birthdays of our father of the Nation. Similarly, we celebrate the days of other characters. A commoner may complain, “You celebrate the days of all others and you ignore us”. Certainly there is truth in the above complain. Common man forms a major part of any society. In fact each and every day is influenced by common man. This might be the reason for appearing daily the common man of Late R. K. Laxman on one leading Daily of our country.
So we demand that the Common Man’s Day be celebrated. Actually, no one loses anything by celebrating days. Days are in plenty. There are three hundred sixty five days in a year. And in our festival loving country called India, there is never shortage of celebrators.
