Vikram’s Tradition
Raj watched his aged grandfather rummage around the lawn.
“This is a strange ritual, you know. No one does it like this.”
Grandpa laughed, “Is the only motive for doing something if someone else does it? On the contrary, if no one does it, then we must. This is tradition, Raj. We keep memories alive and stories burning. What is life but a story that must be passed on? If there isn’t a memory to carry forward,” he pulled out a few leaves, “isn’t it all for nothing?”
Raj sighed.
“Ah, this leaf is perfect,” the old man exclaimed, “it is perfect, indeed”, and he handed the leaf over to his son.
Raj scrutinized the leaf.
The leaf looked indistinguishable from every other leaf that Grandpa had discarded.
The old man happily walked into the house, “Time for salt! Oh, and cake, too!”
“Fine, I will bite, why?”
Grandpa stared at his grandson, soon to enter his twenties in a few years, a boy who had never expressed interest in anything his grandfather had to tell him. Raj’s interest was unprecedented, but Grandpa wasn’t going to just give him the answer like that.
“What do you mean, why?” Grandpa kept emptying out the entire salt cellar.
“Why do you go through the trouble to intricately arrange all of this? We could literally just buy one and celebrate today like everyone else. You are not one to do something without a solid reason behind it.”
Grandpa maintained his gaze. Maybe there was still hope for the boy to grow up to be a decent human rather than one of those children hooked on technology and with no respect for the past.
“Well, Raj, I do it like this every year because that’s how my father, Vikram, did it. And as for why he did it, well, 15th August meant a lot to him just like it did to this country…”
17th November 1922
Vikram sipped his tea, enjoying the wind breeze by on his verandah.
It was a beautiful day.
Basheer rushed in, “Did you see what he wishes for us to do now, Vikram?”
Vikram scowled, the afternoon breeze was gone, and the moment ruined, “What?”
“He wants everyone to switch to khadi, and abandon the western fabric. He’s asking everyone, rich and poor, to spin khadi for some time every day to defy the British government by ditching their textile imports!”, Basheer caught his breath and kept reading the newspaper, “He is also exhorting everyone to give up British titles and honors.”
Vikram chuckled, “Mahatma Gandhi, eh? Another man who seeks to free this country from its darkness. Having been born and brought up in the dark, let me tell you, Basheer, it’s not easy to get away from. Especially from the Viceroy and everyone behind him and definitely not with non-violence, or violence for that matter.”
Basheer kept silent.
“Ah, you like his ideas, don’t you, little brother,” Vikram sighed, “just don’t get lost along the way. All of this is a permanent state of affairs, but I would love to be wrong. Why don’t you just leave this rebellion and settle down, with a-”
Ignoring his brother’s advice, Basheer interjected, “Well, whether you like it or not, I have brought you something as a gift, you could try wearing it. And I have to rush to the market, so, see you soon, brother! Don’t forget to water the lawn, I didn’t grow those plants for nothing!”
Vikram did not turn as the door closed behind him.
He slowly opened the package Basheer had dropped in his lap and let his fingers run over the coarse surface of his gift. He spread it out and unraveled it completely.
It was a khadi dhoti.
4th April 1930
“What’s all that disturbance?!”, Vikram yelled out, jumping up from his bed.
He ran out to the verandah and witnessed the uproar of a multitude standing in front of his house, facing the other way.
“Hey, you there, what’s going on?”, Vikram yelled again at a passerby.
“The Mahatma is passing through here! We want to get a glimpse of him!”
“What?! Why is he passing through this area? Where is he off to-”
“VIKRAM!” The familiar voice of Basheer rang out through the crowd.
“Basheer? What are you doing here?! It’s been so long,” Vikram took a second to catch his breath, “Wait! Are you with him? Are you here with the Mahatma?”
His little brother laughed, “Of course, I am! You should come along, we are going to make salt and break the law at Navsari! It’s a historic moment.”
“I am not coming all the way to Navsari!”
Vikram scowled as Basheer held his hand and guided him through the crowd.
“I said, I did not want to walk all the way to Navsari!”
“Nonsense, you knew you would love the journey, it’s only a matter of walking for a few more hours.”
He yelled once again, “Hours?!”
“I see you are wearing the dhoti I gave you. Finally decided to give in to the freedom fight, eh?” Basheer chuckled, his laughter pervading the crowd around them.
“No, a lot of people told me the orange looks good on me, and besides it was a gift so-”
“Orange? No, no, no, Vikram, not orange. It’s saffron.”
“Ah, what’s the difference?”
Basheer stopped in his tracks. “No, brother, saffron, there is meaning within it. It is strength and courage. Never forget that. I gave you that because growing up, that’s what you were to me. Saffron, brother.”
Vikram grunted and muttered, “Meaning resides where you choose to attribute it to, nothing more, anything other than that is just illogical.”
“Is that truly a reason to never assign meaning to anything, to live a life dull and void of feeling?”, Basheer’s reply, whilst soft now, still rang in his ears.
6th April 1930
Vikram sat on the beach, and heard the Mahatma’s voice ring out in the distance, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” The multitude cheered and roared.
Soon, he felt the sand about him shift as countless surged towards the ocean to boil the sea to make illegal salt for their own purposes. Breaking the law by making salt, what manner of life have we come to, Vikram pondered? He didn’t question the Mahatma but realized as the voices thrashed around him, the absurdity they had been living in.
“Look, brother, salt! Salt of our own!”, Basheer ran up to him.
Vikram didn’t get a chance to protest as his brother grabbed his hand and poured a bit of salt on the surface of his palm.
“Feel that!”
Vikram took a pinch into his other hand and squished the salt around, the fine grains running loosely amidst his fingers. He rubbed it against his two fingers until one grain remained.
Salt.
He brought it close to his cheeks and pondered, is it true?
Will you bring us freedom?
“I am dying, Vikram.”
15 August 1947
Lakshmi sat in the hospital bed, awaiting her husband. She wasn’t nervous,
“What is the father’s name?”
She confidently replied, “Vikram.”
“Where is he? You are almost due for delivery any moment! Do you not have any relatives to contact?”
“Vikram will be here soon.”
[in the same hospital, quite a few wards away]
“Basheer.”
“Vikram.”
He stood at the side as his little brother lay frail and fragile on the bed.
“I have to give it to you, somehow for 20 years you kept it at bay, the cancer, and now your lungs are nearly gone.” Basheer smiled. Vikram sighed and continued, “Why didn’t you just settle down and start a lovely family? You fought for a good cause for over a decade and traveled the country demanding freedom for us all, yes, but you were just one of countless many, a drop in an ocean that surged forth. You never built anything for yourself. You could have been content and happy, instead of-” Basheer interjected, “I am content and happy, Vikram.”
“Of course, you are.”
They kept silent and felt the winds rustle the leaves outside.
Basheer chuckled, “Doesn’t the air smell different today?”
Vikram sniffed, “A bit salty, yes.”
His little brother laughed once again, the sound echoing down the hallway, “15th August 1947. Yes, that’s a date that will ring throughout history. A day when the air smelt different to everyone imprisoned in this country for decades. That’s what I built, Vikram. I am content and happy with what I did all these years. I did have one last wish though.”
“And what could that be?”
Vikram walked around the lawn, holding a baby boy, screaming at the top of his lungs, wailing and crying, but he held him firmly yet tenderly.
Basheer was right. The air did smell different, and the plants that Basheer had left, seemed to revel in this, as they had grown taller and thicker over the years.
His little brother’s dying wish had been that he would have renamed himself if he could, to truly live as a symbol of the freedom fight.
Vikram, in his brother’s honor, had named his son after Basheer’s desire.
“…and that name, a part of which was bestowed upon you, was what my father named me,” Grandpa smiled with a twinkle in his eyes, “Swaraj.”
Raj sat, transfixed by his side.
Grandpa arranged the salt on the table in a neat rectangle. He proceeded to take out a box, open the sides, and carefully lift out a neatly folded saffron dhoti out.
“But you haven’t told me why we don’t just buy a small flag instead of you doing all of this?”, Raj exclaimed, still puzzled.
“Oh yes, that’s why we began talking about this in the first place!” Grandpa laughed whilst he took out the leaves and began cutting them up.
“Vikram, my father, was blind. He could not see from his birth and the doctors couldn’t explain it either. But that did not deter him from his daily routine and being a good elder brother to Basheer. However, my father could only feel everything and was never able to see color. This naturally was irritating for Basheer when he wanted to show Vikram the flag. So he brought together things that my father knew and this is how my father touched and experienced the new national flag of our newborn country.”
Raj stared at the table.
The saffron dhoti neatly folded into a rectangle, the white salt neatly arranged below, the dark green leaves cut up to form the familiar tricolor, the colors he could recognize anywhere since his childhood.
Grandpa continued, “Every year, on my birthday, on Independence Day, on Basheer’s death anniversary, my father would arrange this in memory of his brother, and in memory of those who had fought for freedom alongside him. This is the flag my father knew, and despite Basheer being one amongst the countless and nameless many that fought for independence, he was the freedom fighter my father knew.”
“That was Basheer’s legacy, why he fought for a country, never making anything for himself. It wasn’t a path that everyone would have taken, and one cannot judge my father for taking a different route, but this was what Basheer chose, to be part of something larger than himself. A belief that strongly drove him and also helped him drive away poisonous cancer for the better part of a decade till his goal had been accomplished.”
Raj chimed in, “It is the quality of one’s convictions that determines success, not the number of followers!”
Grandpa stared at him, “Surprisingly well said. Where did you learn that from?”
His grandson laughed, “It’s just a Harry Potter quote!”
Grandpa chuckled.
He smiled to himself and accepted that there may yet be hope for the future generations that follow.
The author has written this fictionalized account to bring to our memories the innumerable number of people, the unnamed masses that surged towards freedom alongside the famed freedom fighters that we name, many just like Basheer that strove forward for those who would come after them, for us. The author has written this in the hope that this story reminds us to remember them on this Independence Day, and from here on out as well.
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