Dancing with Dogs: My Independence Days

My Independence Days

Since it is almost the 15th in India and tomorrow is the Mela day, I am concluding my Independence series with this post today. This is about how I typically spent my August 15ths and I would love to hear what you guys did on that day.

My earliest memories of the Independence Day involved waking up early in the morning, washing my hair, wearing new clothes, the usual. Then we did one of the things that I loved as a child, we bought a little fabric Indian flag and pinned to my dress - I cannot express how much I liked it. They sold those flags only around this time of the year and they cost just 5 paise, but they made me so proud, sometimes I you’d find me with about 10 of them pinned all over my dress :)

After that, we would have really early breakfast and leave to go to the military barracks in the city with my dad (we means me and my sister). We would stand outside the wire fence and watch along side hundreds of watchers such as us, proud soldiers march past the flag. Sometimes it would get so crowded, my dad would have to put me and my sister on his shoulders, so we could see everything. I had an uncle and a cousin in the marching band of soldiers - we would always try to pick them out when they marched by.

As we grew up, things changed - we moved far enough that our ritual trip to the barracks proved too much. Instead, we attended ceremonies in the school, ate the handfuls of candy passed out there and then came back home to watch the celebrations in Delhi on our boxy Black & White TV. Well, in time, the TV became a color TV and we moved on to switching channels between DD for the Delhi celebrations to the various other channels celebrating the Independence MTV-style or with a deluge of patriotic songs. Now of course, my Independence celebrations are a flurry of e-cards to my parents and friends and some pretty pixels on my website :) That has been my journey …

Posted by shanti at August 14, 2003 9:58 AM