 It was like any other day. For each individual, it carried with it its own significance. In yet another house in Lachance Delhi, only days earlier, a British gentleman, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, had completed redrawing a map of India. He had used red ink to ruthlessly create new boundaries. Now, this map was to become the tangible physical contours of a country. In different parts of the country, members of royal families of erstwhile kingdoms waited for the boundaries of their empires to be erased permanently, waiting anxiously to be absorbed into a new country which was about to be born. It could have been any other day. 14th of August 1947 wasn't. Because in less than 12 hours on the 15th of August 1947, a nation changed to bondage was preparing to unshackle itself of its fetters. Because in the words of that Kashmiri Pandit, who was to become the nation's first prime minister, a voice of the country long suppressed was finally going to find true utterance. The midnight of the 14th of August 1947, as the clock welcomed the 15th of August, the Union Jack, representing colonialism was lowered and the tricolor representing the new nation's liberty, its pride and symbol was finally hoisted. It is said that on that day when millions of Indians descended on the capital to witness this birth of a nation, a rainbow flared across the overcast sky. Some called it a benediction, a heavenly sign, gifting this infant nation with celestial blessings. All over the country there were celebrations. In many towns and cities, prisoners were set free. Yet beneath all this euphoria was the unstated tension of the communal carnage waiting to be explored. Mahatma Gandhi's death would take away from the centre stage the man who could have given the country's destiny a different emphasis. It is a theoretical issue whether his death took the country on an alternate course. Yet others who had been his apprentices had already taken over the helm of affairs. They were all men with impeccable credentials. In the coming years they would teach the nation how to cope with self-reliance, to conceive its own agenda, to overcome difficulties and obstacles, to fight demons it had created along the way and some which it had inherited. It was its achievements and its setbacks in striving to come to terms with itself, with its pluralistic composition, with its commitment to democracy, with its use of democratic means to restore its occasional bouts with anarchy, which defined the true meaning of its trist with destiny. After all, in the 50 years since that fateful day of the 14th of August 1947 and subsequently the triumphant freedom on the 15th of August, India was and is still a nation in the making.