Our entire family is replete with sentiments of patriotism. Uncle Swarna Singh left for his heavenly abode in jail in 1910, two or three years after my birth. Uncle Ajit Singh is leading the life of an exile in foreign countries.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm an exile. My father had the courage to leave with his wife, his mother and three children under twelve. It took more courage to leave, to sacrifice everything for freedom, than to stay.
My dad was in the Indian Army. He died in a terrorist attack in Kashmir in 1994. After that, my mum and I settled in Noida. I went to Delhi Public School in Noida and then to Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University. It was in college that I realised I wanted to be on the stage and in front of the camera.
I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison.
My grandfather was born in India and three generations of my family served there.
Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I've remained an Indian.
The Jew is at once alienated and indestructible; he is in exile from his own country and in exile even from himself, yet he survives the annihilating fury of history.
Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
L. Ram Saran Das was sentenced to death in 1915, and the sentence was later commuted to life transportation. Today myself, sitting in the condemned cell, I can let the readers know as authoritatively that the life-imprisonment is comparatively a far harder lot than that of death.
In them days, it was just still not illegal to kill an Indian. If you killed an Indian, you'd be very unfortunate if you got probation - most of them were released immediately.