Does the unity of the people of South Asia in 1857 offer hope for the future?
jailed twice by the British for organising women during the freedom struggle. My grandparents’ home at Broadway in Chennai, where I was born, was a huge traditional home with 20 foot high ceilings and a central courtyard. One went up to the first floor, where we lived, by a spiral staircase which friends of the family still talk about some thirty years after the building was demolished. It was an era when there was no television, when the mornings in most Indian homes were scenes of frantic activity, women cooking while the men and children bathed and dressed in school uniforms to the sound of music on radio. All India Radio and Radio Ceylon competed for popularity among Indians particularly in the South, and at night one could look up at the sky and see the stars clearly. The Central Station in Madras had horse and Rekalla bull drawn “jhatkas” outside and the city had vastly more taxis than the now ubiquitous autorickshaws. It was an era of black and white films, of hand drawn ricksha
