A photo dated 15 August 1947 shows Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, delivering his Famous “Tryst With Destiny” speech at the Parliament House in New Delhi

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance… And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart…

I write this at the eleventh hour, before the hands of the clock officially rest on India’s 68th Independence Day. Oh wait, isn’t it a national holiday? I must admit the latter has me more thrilled. Also admit to not having read the country’s first Independence Day speech (excerpt above) in its entirety until now. I shall wallow in shame for a bit, until I cross over to gratitude. Grateful for this chance to dwell on what freedom meant then, means now, and will come to be.

The early Independence Day memories are mired in sleep. Of being woken up at the crack of dawn, when the rest of the world slept peacefully, to go to school. Us pinafore-clad children loved the day – standing in queues in freshly pressed uniforms, singing the national anthem the loudest, listening to the principal’s advice on being ‘model’ citizens of the world. There was also the fleeting bit about dreams and aspirations. Watching the flag unfurl and the rose petals and confetti it held swaying in the air was magic (insert “oohs” and “aahs”). Then came the best part – getting candy. We got two per head and it meant the world. This two-hour affair and then returning home to “Independence Day Specials” on TV and extended play time. Oh, we had to be careful in hanging the uniforms back because it was a shame to wear them for just two hours and toss them in the laundry basket. Till the teens, it was a matter of pride to make it to the flag hoisting ceremony every year; post that it became a case of “compulsory attendance or face consequences” and ironically, some freedom was lost.

The other morning memory is finding a patriotic grandfather glued to Doordarshan, the national broadcaster and the only channel we watched before the advent of cable television. For as long as he could remember, he hadn’t missed the Prime Minister’s speech on D-Day morning or the proverbial parade. Thank heavens for their generation that remembers waking up to a free country, and still believes in the possibility of a ‘totally free’ country.

For some time now, freedom and independence have become a way of life. In the personal space, at the workplace; politically and apolitically; in social spheres and in spaces otherwise. And in crises and strife, they are only too dear. While it’d be safe to own up to often taking them for granted, there is a nagging awareness and need. To have worthy answers to questions on what freedom means to me. To what it means above and beyond pages of history, beyond making for stories, beyond being an agenda. Mostly, it’s the need to answer what I’m do-ing with a gift that many paid for with their lives and souls. To know what it is that I aspire for my motherland. And then, like a blessed answer, Tagore’s words coming pouring forth from a dog-eared yellowed textbook that I held as a pinafore-clad child:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Also, thank you India.