At 15, they pledged their lives for the nation, got jailed

CHENNAI: Flag hoisting, photo sessions, speeches, TV interviews, governor’s tea, felicitation at the secretariat... for friends and fellow freedom fighters A Durairaj, V K Selvam, R Ganapathy, and G Venugopalan, August 15 is always the busiest day of their social calendar.

Invites come flooding in a few days before "freedom week" when everyone wants a freedom fighter on their I-day programme checklist.

The rest of the year, say the ‘tyagis’ -- who have been neighbours at BV Colony, Vyasarpadi for decades now -- no one really remembers them. "Only we have been checking in on each other, through the 70 years," laughs Ganapathy, adding that the friends meet every evening at a temple in the colony and chat for a few hours. "But we hardly talk of the freedom movement. We are also reminded of our role only when Independence Day comes around and our phones start ringing," says Ganapathy.

The four – all of them now nearing 90 -- were part of the Indian Independence League in erstwhile Burma, having joined the movement spearheaded by Subhas Chandra Bose.

"We were teenagers then," says Venugopalan, who adds that the four of them moved to Chennai from Myanmar in the 60s. "And just listening to the words of Netaji ignited a fire in us. The youth today have their Rajinikanth, we had Netaji. There was a charm about him that drew all the youth towards his cause," adds Venugopalan, who is also the TN state secretary of the All India Freedom Fighters’ Association.

"We were around 15 then so we were recruited to the League for propaganda work and to maintain accounts. We were even jailed for it and no one could visit us other than our parents," says Selvam. "We never picked up guns, but we did help round up more and more people for the cause. Every week, Netaji would come to a camp a few kilometres away from ours and we would walk there to hear him speak and it would reaffirm our faith in the cause," says Venugopalan. "Just to hear him say those words – give me your blood, I will give you freedom. No movie dialogue can match his words."

Venugopalan believes there are around a thousand freedom fighters scattered around the state, but every year many of them are either forgotten or are dropped out from the government-maintained list and so do not get pension. "It saddens me that Independence Day is remembered but the people who helped get the country there are so easy to forget," he says.