A celebration of the August 15 of our collective childhoods

AS a primary school child, I understood that there were four annual festivals. Just as every year was flanked on two sides by Holi and Diwali, so there were the two celebratory festivals of January 26 and August 15. All of these had a few commonalities. It was always a holiday in the true sense, which meant that our father would be home and involved in organising the day’s celebrations. We would wake up early as a family. Papa would put on music on our Sony cassette recorder. Mummy would cook a special breakfast and begin to prepare for the potluck with our neighbours later in the day.

In my imagination as a child, there were days when we became one with an extended community around our home. I cannot say that any one of these days stood out more than the other. Each had its own unique features. On Holi, we would find ourselves matted and colour-splattered by afternoon, and then spend the rest of the day recovering and unwinding from the morning’s highs. On Diwali, the grand finale was the lights and crackers in the evening, with all of us dressed up in our sparkling best. January 26 started early and involved switching on the television; live classical music performed by India’s greatest living musicians, notably Ustad Bismillah Khan, would set up a reverential mood in the home, in anticipation of the grand Republic Day parade. The neighbourhood park would become a venue for a sports event in the afternoon.

Independence Day lands in the middle of the year. It has always been associated with flag-hoisting and the sound of patriotic songs on radio, TV and the residents’ association event in the neighbourhood. It involved early morning trips to our school and standing in attention as teachers and the school principal gathered to hoist the Tricolour. As the National Anthem was sung, everybody’s erect back and straight hands by their side would signal to the children to assume the same respectful posture. We felt pride, even if we weren’t yet sure of the full significance of the event.

Later, there would be sweets distributed and kites to choose from. Our parents would laugh and bond with each other as they tried to revive their childhood skills of patang-baazi and attempted to keep their kites in the air. All of us children would get a chance to jump high with the kite as the first step to releasing it in the air. We would run off to play our own games, giddy with the excitement of being in school without the regular structure of assembly and classes.

Through my growing-up years in Ranchi, Calcutta and later Delhi, my father always hoisted the National Flag on the roof of our home on both Republic Day and Independence Day. It was a khadi flag that moved homes with us. When we were in a first floor flat for three years, he could hoist in on the balcony. Papa did all the rituals himself — the unfolding, hoisting and later the folding back for storage till the next time. The song, “Ae mere watan ke logon, zara aankh mein bhar lo paani”, written by Kavi Pradeep and first performed by Lata Mangeshkar in 1963 as a tribute to the soldiers who fought in the India-China war, would play on radio as well as in the neighbourhood. In our consciousness, it became linked to the celebration of August 15, never failing to remind us that we were part of a larger history and society.

Inexplicably, as I grew up, August 15 mornings began to feature moist eyes as the flag would unfurl and “Jana Gana Mana Adhinayak Jaya Hai” was sung collectively. What was this mixture of reverence and pride that I was feeling? Why did it always induce tears? I wasn’t sad. So what was the trigger for tears?

As a parent of next-generation Indians, it has become my role to pass on to them what I have received from the elders in my life. As I wake up the children on a holiday and make a dash for their school in time for the flag-hoisting ceremony, I am passing on the baton of both belonging and responsibility to them. I want them to feel the same connectedness to the freedom struggle led by those who came two or three generations before us.

An appreciation for the collective that we are part of is an integral part of our well-being and mental health. As we seek to inculcate a sense of pride in one’s identity as an Indian in the next generation, we also want to give them the gift of exploring their inheritance and giving it a renewed meaning in their life. We cannot demand gratitude. We have to offer freedom first — to explore ideas, to defy, disobey and challenge outdated norms. To dissent. Only then can we expect a promise and a resolve to participate in building a just and equitable society going ahead.

— The writer is a filmmaker & author natasha.badhwar@gmail.com