My grandmother, Janaki, was a treasure trove of recollections that she cherished till the tip of her life. She was born in pre-Independence India, and she or he by no means knew her precise date of beginning. She at all times calculated her age with India’s first Independence Day as reference. “Manaku swathantram vachinappudu (after we lastly grew to become free), I feel I used to be eight or 9.” I at all times discovered it very attention-grabbing. Although she couldn’t recall a lot of her early childhood, the reminiscence of her first Independence Day by no means pale.

It was the morning of August 15, a few years in the past. I awakened and went to the balcony to see my grandmother, (we name her Ammamma) wanting contemporary in a khadi saree and intently making a sample, a muggu (additionally known as kolam in Tamil) of flags and charkha, which she drew yearly on Independence Day for so long as I might bear in mind. Her fingers had been regular regardless of her age. I had by no means thought of asking her earlier, however that morning, I used to be very curious in regards to the sample and the story behind it.

As she started to discuss the precise muggu, her face lit up with childlike innocence. In that second, I might visualise the younger woman she as soon as was, rising up in a lower-middle-class, massive household in a small village within the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, overwhelmed within the pleasure of freedom. The solar shone brighter than ever as the entire nation awoke to a brand new life. “All the village knew from elders who had been part of the liberty wrestle that independence would quickly be declared,” she recalled. “When the information broke on August 14, 1947, a roar of pleasure swept by way of everybody.”

She continued her story: “On the night of the 14th, as was customary earlier than festivals in Andhra, all the youngsters got an oil head tub. My mom and aunts cleaned the home, organized the flowers and tied mango leaves on the entrance of their properties. My father and elder brothers got here house carrying heavy baggage. Calling all eight of us inside, my father handed every one new garments. ‘These are made with the blood, sweat, and tears of our individuals,’ he mentioned. The garments had been made with khaddaru (khadi), hand-spun and stitched by our villagers.” Although they had been thick and tough in texture, they had been worn with pleasure the following morning. Ammamma continued, “The elders knew we might get freedom sooner, and all of the elders used to spin these secretly of their homes. Khaddar was the material image of the liberty motion and self-reliance,” she instructed me. “Have you learnt it’s hand-spun on a charkha?” I mentioned sure. I immediately remembered the portrait of Gandhiji together with his spinning wheel.

Her mom and aunts awakened very early on the fifteenth and cleaned the doorway, then drew designs of flags with muggu powder (limestone powder) on the ground. “Each home, wealthy or poor, created a flag muggu, the identical design, at their doorsteps and you would see them all around the village. Since that day, we’ve drawn this flag muggu each Independence Day,” she mentioned with pleasure.

Everybody wore their new khadi garments. Tiny fabric flags had been pinned near their hearts on their garments. She remembered how some individuals cried, not from sorrow however from pleasure, because the flag was hoisted (jhanda vandanam). Patriotic songs crammed the air. Everybody chanted “Swatantram vardhillali (freedom ought to flourish)” and sweets had been distributed.

My Ammamma’s recollections stretched past that day. She instructed me how my great-grandmother Mahalakshmi had as soon as seen Gandhi tatha (grandfather), who was travelling to Madras (at present’s Chennai). I smiled on the time period ‘tatha‘. In Delhi, the place I used to be born and introduced up, we known as him Gandhiji, the daddy of the nation.

She defined that his prepare was to cease at Ponnuru, close to her village. “We didn’t have pedda patti (broad gauge) in our village, solely chinna patti (slender gauge). The Madras trains often ran on the pedda patti.” That was an attention-grabbing piece of data for me.

“When the information unfold, all the village, individuals of all religions, castes, and ages, rushed to the station, together with my great-grandmother, Mahalakshmi. When the prepare arrived, an previous, frail man with a stick, a towel on his naked shoulders, and spherical glasses stepped down. He waved, folded his fingers, and smiled on the crowd for a couple of minutes earlier than boarding once more. A whole lot of all of them shouted “Vande Mataram!” and ‘Swatantram maa janma hakku (freedom is my birthright)’ because the prepare pulled away.”

Whereas she was reminiscing about her expertise, a small group of younger women and men with a loudspeaker, waving flags, handed by our home in Delhi. I took her frail hand and led her to the balcony. She watched for some time, then mentioned softly, “These days had been completely different. These emotions had been completely different.” With a sigh, she went inside.

I stood wanting on the muggu she had drawn with flowers. We didn’t have muggu powder, so she used chalk, flowers, and leaves to create two flags and the charkha wheel within the centre, within the conventional fashion that solely she might do.

For seventy-seven years, she had created it with love and pleasure, an emblem of her private connection to India’s freedom. For her it was an emblem of unity the place every one, no matter faith, caste, or class, was collectively within the freedom wrestle. Sure, Ammamma was proper; this muggu represented the shared historical past and spirit of her village, reminding us of our collective struggles, resistance and power.

Ammamma handed away final 12 months. I’m not positive I can recreate her muggu, however I’ll attempt, protecting alive her reminiscence of that first daybreak of freedom, and with it, a reminder to all of us of the true that means of “freedom”.

[Ragini De is an aspiring journalist and a former student of ACJ with training in classical ballet. She finds interest in writing about art, culture, personal histories, and occasionally on public health. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]