How many of you can sing the National Anthem correctly?

All of you I hope.

But there are children in my building who can't. Because as one of them told my friend, who along with few other people, is organizing an Independence Day function tomorrow, he kind of 'muttered it in school and his mom didn't know the entire lyrics either.'

The kid is probably nine or ten. Out of which he's lived abroad for about five six years. It's the mother I'm wondering about.

She'd be what, 33? 34? Maybe younger? In any case that's not an age when you usually start forgetting. And how do you forget the words of a song that you sung every morning in school, unless of course school was in some part of Manhattan? And for that matter, I know several people who've grown up very far away from India, who can sing the Anthem perfectly.

In this case, the mother grew up in Mumbai.

Leave aside patriotism. Just think simply. Isn't Jana Gana Mana embedded in her mind, like so many nursery rhymes, ABCD, multiplication tables, old ad jingles, basically things we grew up hearing and often singing along?

My friend, a very curious (and mischievous) person, couldn't contain herself and told the kids to tell their parents to write down the words of the National Anthem for them so that they could practice at home. One dad was honest enough to call her up and check whether it was Punjab, Hindu, Gujarat, Maratha? No, it's Sindh or Sindhu, she corrected him.

Thanks a lot he said. The wi-fi isn't working properly and the internet connection is pretty dicey these days.