On Independence and Other Things

Biji, my grandmother, like a lot of our grandparents, was a very political being.

Growing up in those heady days when young people agitated not for their own small freedoms, but for the big “Independence” for their country, Biji joined Bapu in satyagraha and non-cooperation, took her 4 year old son to shoo Simon away and cried bitterly as two pieces of her heart were ripped away from her by the Partition. She wore nothing but white khadi since the age of 22 and talked about the country’s leaders as if she knew them all intimately. Some, she did.

My dad was not yet 10 when Nehru delivered his midnight speech that held the nation spellbound. By the time my grandmother was 42, I had been born and when she was my age she already had 5 grandchildren.

Politics was daily breakfast fare in our household and the state of the country was of direct and immediate concern to Biji, who subscribed to 13 newspapers and magazines in 4 languages and devoured them all.

The flag, the anthem, Vande Mataram held more emotional value for her than the symbols of her religion. Each and every little landmark date on the way to 1947 was celebrated or mourned with religious fervour other families associate with id or diwali.

Between her generation and mine, there was still the direct touch of a body full of first-hand memories of life in an India not yet free. I saw it in her soft, white “dhoti”, I heard it in her night-time stories, I felt it in her hot, naked feet that walked the roads without slippers and were soaked in a tub of cold water upon her return.

Biji died of nothing, suddenly, at the ripe old age of 57 leaving behind her a full family of 2 sons, 2 daughters in law, 8 grandchildren and countless unknown faces she had benefitted in various ways that we only came to know after her death. I was then 15.

My reactions to Republic Day, Independence Day, the anthem, the flag are still hugely emotional because of my childhood associations with them through Biji. My daughter is now almost 15 and though she knows to respect the symbols of her country, Indian Independence is something she studies in her history books and takes exams on.

Independence Day doesn't mean as much to gen-next as it did to us; just as it didn't mean as much to us as it did to our grandparents. But that’s how it should be, I think. In many ways it is right and fitting that the past stops being overwhelmingly meaningful to the future.

The future will have its own challenges, its own revolutions, its own battles to fight.