Family remembers this 'Jhansi ki Rani'

VADODARA: As the nation prepares to celebrate the 66th Independence Day on August 15, a Vadodara family is preparing for the big day with a sense of pride as well as a tinge of sadness. Sadness, because they are mourning the loss of one of the most illustrious women figures of Independence struggle, Capt Lakshmi Sahgal, who passed away on July 23 after inspiring several generations of women in her family as well as India.
Sahgal, who was handpicked by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Singapore, to raise the Jhansi ki Rani brigade , an all-women combat unit consisting of housewives, for Indian National Army (INA), last came to Vadodara in 2000 when she was invited by the Arvind Rao Charitable Trust to inaugurate a statue of Bose on Vikram Sarabhai Road. She had stayed at her cousin Vinodini Mayor's cottage on Jetalpur Road.
It was also this time, when she met her 'jailer' from Burma incarceration days, Lt Col Ashokraje Gaekwad - a grandson of Baroda ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad III - who was then the ADC to Lord Mountbatten and later became a friend of Vinodini's husband Satya Paul Mayor. A chance meeting after a gap of over 60 years when Sahgal and Gaekwad were on the opposite side, gave the family a rare occasion to know about the freedom fighter's turbulent life of those days from a very different perspective. "We listened with gaping mouths as they both talked of INA cadre's struggle as well as the lighter moments, when the Indian officers in the British Army would sneak out the POWs like Sahgal for parties and outings during their house arrests," recalls the cousin.
Now, in her 70s, Vinodini, the daughter of Lakshmi's maternal uncle, was 18 years younger to her cousin, but she vividly recalls her earliest memory of this vivacious, fun loving but highly determined and motivated elder cousin at the family home in Vadakkath village in Kerala's Palakkad district. "Lakshmi was very beautiful, charming and had very long, beautiful hair. She had been refused permission to go to Singapore by her mother Ammu Swaminathan after her MBBS, but she knew that her uncles would be able to persuade their sister, so she came to the village home to convince them first. I remember, there was this secret meeting which took place in one of the rooms on the first floor and she emerged successful. The next time, we girls saw our cousin, she had cut her long beautiful hair because she could not manage looking after it in the rough and tough life in the jungles of Burma."
Lakshmi was by then married to Col Prem Sahgal whom she had met during her INA days after a failed marriage. Vinodini, who had by then, moved in with her bua, Lakshmi's mother Ammu in Chennai for her studies recall, "There was a huge reception organized by the town people at Marina beach in Chennai in the honour of Lakhsmi and her husband Prem. Ammu aunt took all us cousins- Lakshmi's younger sister Mrinalini and other women of the family to the public function. I don't really remember what Lakhsmi said at the occasion, but she was repeatedly raising slogans of "Jai Hind' and would get huge response from the public."
By the time Lakshmi came to Vadodara in 2000, she had grown old and frail and was nursing an upset stomach, but the enthusiasm that Vinodini saw in Chennai was intact. "She climbed up the ladder sprightly, garlanded the statue and raised the slogan 'Jai Hind'. It is hard to believe that she is not among us anymore," says Vinodini.