“હું દુખી છું એટલું લખવાનું છે. Sad. Dhrishita”

I am writing
this sitting in Imphal – capital of a remote state of Manipur. My work involves
travelling and thus I need to stay away from home frequently. However, whenever
I am away, my communication with my daughter continues. She sends me SMS or
emails, with the help of her mother Nirali. Google transcription has made it
easy to communicate her feelings/thoughts as it is in the same language that
she expresses.

This morning I
received this SMS: “આપણે
આપણા દેશને કેમ સાચવતાં નથી. હું શું કરી શકું? હું દુખી છું. ધ્રિશિતા” (Why are we not taking good care of our country
What can I? Sad. Dhirshita). After a bit more inquiry, I got to the following
details.

While returning
home with Nirali, she saw a person not obeying traffic rules, despite
the presence of a traffic police right in front of him. Thereafter, she met
with a small traffic jam; again, there on corner of same road two policemen were
chatting with each other and not contributing to manage the road jam. At this, she
lamented, “આ બધા પપ્પા જેવા પોચા છે. સરકારને કમ્પ્લૈઈન કરવી છે. શું સરકાર પણ
પોચી છે? કોઈ સ્ટ્રીક્ટ નથી. મમ્મા, તમે મારી સાથે જેમ સ્ટ્રીક્ટ અને પોચા
છો, તેમ દેશ ના પણ થઇ જાઓ, ને! મને ચિંતા થાય છે” (All of them are lenient like Papa. I
want to complain to government. Is government also lenient? Nobody is strict.
Mamma, you are both strict and lenient to me, no. Why don’t you be the one for
the nation too and do the same? I am worried.) Few meters ahead after taking a turn, they met with a young
man who was smoking and chewing something. Suddenly, he spat and threw off that
red concoction. Witnessing this, made Dhrishita really sad, “મને ગાંધીજી પાછા જોઈએ છે. જુઓ એના બાળકો એના
દેશને કેટલો ખરાબ અને ગંદો કરે છે” ( I want
Gandhiji back. Look, his children are making his country dirty and bad). Then she asked, “શું હું
અને તમે મમ્મા-પપ્પા, આપને ત્રણ જણા થઈને દેશ બદલી શકીએ?” મારે પપ્પા સાથે વાત
કરવી છે અને પૂછવું છે કે હું મારે રીતે શું કરી શકું કે દેશને સારો કરી શકીએ”. (Can I, you and Papa, just three of us can change the country? I
want to talk to Papa and ask what I can do to make the country better.)

What do I do?
How do I respond to her?