Independence Day: Just another status or a tribute to the lives laid down?

*beep* *beep* *beep* *beep*. 

Waking my lazy ass up from hibernation, my phone's annoying message tone displayed a "NEW TEXT MESSAGE" from Facebook. *Sigh*. I should have paid heed to my friends advice against enabling message notifications. With one eye open I read the so called notification which read:" Rahul has tagged a photo of you". I was about to break my wall with the NOKIA I had, when another one of those messages popped up displaying some user's comment saying: "HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO YOU TOO". Oh right!! Today is Independence Day. 

Happy Independence Day to You folks.

So today is the day when FaceBook and Twitter is flooded with statuses, pictures, videos all saying Happy Independence Day, tagging each other merrily and then commenting on each other's Independence Day images, message "How they are proud of India" to all their contacts. Sure the day is of immense importance to India and it's citizens, but are you sure that the amount of lives that were sacrificed to achieve the Independence and throw out the British can be  justified merely with a status and an image getting hundreds of likes and comments or the 66% sale adverts which are thrown in with the newspaper, the new ice cream flavors with colors matching to that of Indian flag are launched,  or by the tricolor sticking to the glasses of showrooms, or  by decking up mannequins with the tri-colored clothes.Somehow, on Independence Day everyone shows off the patriotism to show that they really care, buy those plastic flags from the cross-roads, listen to patriotic music, watch Border, Gadar, LOC Kargil in their AC fitted rooms munching to Vadilal's tri colored-ice creams and update statuses and tweet about the day and then the next day dump those flags beside the first dustbin they get on their way to office. Is this how the patriotism is shown towards a country for which their ancestors fought so hard? Can the lives of those valiant soldiers be compensated for a tweet or a status update? For a true citizen who is REALLY PROUD of his/her country,  shouldn't the patriotic feelings remains all throughout the year not just come out of the shell on Independence Day and Republic Day?