Today in India we celebrated our 74th Independence Day. Usually children go to school to hoist the Tricolour. But as we all know, this time everyone stays at home.

So what did the kids do at home today? Well this was something beyond my expectation. Obviously it was P’s idea. She and A created an Independence Day show for us. It included performances and quizzes and an art exhibition with refreshments (fake ones 😃)

A board was put up in the afternoon at the venue (the living room) “Independence Day show here at 6:00” and we were all told to gather on the sofa at sharp 6. As the guests arrived , first me then grandma and then dad and grandad, we were all handed over a brochure for the evening. It told us the sequence of events , the food menu and a little about the little performers.

The event started with their introduction and then a short poetry which P had written herself. They had to write a poem on what freedom means to them. She wrote a very thought provoking one.

What does freedom mean? Freedom means to live freely To make your own decisions To live your life That is freedom’s mission But while you live freely While you live your life You have to be responsible And help each other strive So let’s put our hands together And thank all those who have given us this freedom Let’s celebrate in a special way For today is our 74th Independence Day

This was followed by 3 quizzes. We were divided into 2 teams for this. Me and papa in one and grandma and grandpa in the other. Now P did the entire research and every little detail was planned by her. The first quiz was on guessing the languages spoken in different states. The second was on which dance form belongs to which state and the third was absolutely unique. She found a coffee table book on Indian Monuments in our library. She showed us the picture of a monument from the book and we had to guess the name. And mind you…. it was not easy. We had measly scores like 1/5 and 2/5. They were tough!

After the quizzes there was a break where we had to visit the art gallery set up by them and order food. A was in charge of these. She took our orders and brought us the pretend food and then took us around the art gallery which had art on display done by P. We could choose the artwork we liked and keep it for free 😀. While we did this P tallied our scores and our team won. Yay!!

Soon after we’re the performances by both of them. They used the song “Let it go” from Frozen. P performed a fusion piece in which she did the classical dance form Kathak on that song. She had prepared this piece herself for an inter school dance competition( we still don’t know if she got selected) And A did the movie version of it. She put so much emotion in it! I have to consider drama for this girl!

And thus we celebrated our Independence Day. One the best I’ve celebrated in a long long time. When we were in school we did dances and had short performances on Independence Day in school. But nothing has ever matched up to this.