Second Place: An Unforgettable Independence Day

An Unforgettable Independence Day

by Apoorva Goyal

Second Place

The school assembly hall was shining in the morning sun. The white uniforms, along with the tricolour flag, created a magnificent sight against the bright blue sky. The energetic atmosphere was filled with the joy of Independence Day, 15th August. The celebrations also brought a buzz of drums accompanied with songs and dance of tricolour children flashing by.

The warm, yet assertive voice of the Tanisha shouted, “Parade… Stand at ease.” 

Tanisha was the perfect picture of joy, standing tall with perfect posture and her face radiantly glowing with pride. With teachers smiling and parents cheering, her big moment had finally arrived.

The head girl and top student, Tanisha, was finally living her dream, leading the parade on 15th August, India's Independence Day, the world's largest democracy. Tanisha positioned herself in the front and as usual, her strides were deliberate and in perfect synchrony. The march—past commenced, with the students all synchronized and doing the same arm movements in perfect unison. She could feel the pride radiating from the teachers watching her, but to her it felt like wearing a crown with a crack in it. She’d worked years for this—the honor, the applause, the leadership.

Tanisha's lips stirred, but her thoughts wandered. Because somewhere in the crowd was the only person who could make her forget every medal and certificate she’d ever earned. And she wasn’t sure whether that made her tougher or awfully, treacherously weak.

She upheld her stance, hands at her sides and shoulders back, yet her eyes scurried around every few seconds. While her composure was set to soldierly precision, she unbendingly held her hands at her sides, and her shoulders straightened. Her gaze was wandering, darting, and shifting to the sides. Her eyes were searching for her younger brother, trying to locate the boy in the crowd. 

She knew where he stood—away from the main crowd, off to one side, as if the world had pushed him there.

Her stomach tightened. What if he’d meandered away? What if he’d gotten lost in the swarm of kids,in the blur of color and noise? 

It wasn’t like Varun (her little brother) to follow instructions; his mind played its music, and he followed it wherever it led because of his autism. He had 40% autism, and he was unable to communicate at 8 years old. He had started forming his first words at the age of 4 and his first sentence at the age of 5, and still at 8 years old, he was not able to communicate his thoughts and feelings properly. 

A sudden awkward movement in the crowd caught her eye, scarcely perceptible among the fluttering flags and bobbing heads. And then she saw him.

Varun.

Varun was a sight, in the tiny white uniform, his shorts a size too big, and his socks halfway down his calves. Ma had combed his hair neatly parted and was holding his chin, telling him to ‘stay still, beta.’ The way he never could.

He remained detached from the neatly arranged lines of children; it was as though he were an outsider to the children standing in the lines. It was an experience he was detached from and simply watched. His little athletic body moved to the side as if it was following the slow pace of a gentle ebb and flow, his awkward movements did not match the drums or the marching. His right hand floated in the air, tracing invisible circles—not random, no, but careful, deliberate, like he was conducting an orchestra no one else could hear.

Occasionally he'd stop, tilt his head acutely to one side, and emit a small hum—gentle, nearly bashful—before continuing his silent show. His eyes were welded on something far away behind the tricolour flags and speeches, something that only he could perceive. She smiled against her will. 

And then Tanisha heard the chanting: "Pagal… pagal… pagal…" It was quiet at first, merely a murmur beneath the brass of the band. 

But the word spread. It always did. The word cut through the celebratory air like a knife. Her eyes flashed towards the noise. A bunch of boys from Class 2, grinning, elbowing one another, pointing at Varun. They didn't even bother to conceal it. Something hot and acidic churned in her chest. 

The grin snapped off her face.

Her jaw locked so hard it ached. "Keep marching, Tanisha… eyes front… keep marching." She tried. 

God, she tried. But everything outside her began to blur—the flag, the crowd, even the principal's nod of approval—all bleached away in the pounding beat of her own heartbeat. 

How dare they? 

How dare they come into his little world with their nasty words? 

She pushed her chin up, but her mind cried out, "Why is it always him? 

Why won't they ever just leave him alone? Her feet moved in perfect sync with the parade, but her heart wasn’t here anymore. It was already running across the field, kneeling beside Varun, shielding him from their eyes. 

But she couldn’t. Not yet.

The uniform she wore was suddenly heavy, suffocating, like it was pinning her to the role she had to play. And that helplessness—that was the worst part. 

Because in that moment, she wasn’t the head girl. She wasn’t the perfect daughter. She was just a sister, trapped in the neat lines of a parade, forced to watch her brother’s innocence chip away… one cruel word at a time. 

Pagal. 

At first, the word just floated past him. He didn’t pay much attention, but he recognised the boys who were saying those words and also his instinct was telling him, that it is something bad.

He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he knew it was about him. He could feel it—in the way their eyes stayed on him, in the way their mouths curled. Something inside him clenched. 

The drums from the parade thumped in his chest, faster than his heartbeat. The sunlight pressed down hard on his head. Too many voices, too close, all climbing over each other to get to him. 

Without thinking, his head started to move—a slow circle at first, then faster, like it could somehow shake the words out. The little clicking sound in his throat came without asking, the way it always did when things got too big, too loud. He rolled his eyes up toward the sky, trying to block out their voices and their faces, which was thumping in his head. He tried to ignore but the laughter and taunts just grew louder.

“Dekha, kaisa pagal hai.”

“Arre dekh, pagal ko.” 

It was like they were throwing stones, but he couldn’t see them. His hands curled into fists so tight his nails 

pressed little moons into his skin. Stop. Just stop. But the words in his head scattered before he could catch one to say out loud. 

The air felt thick. Colours too bright, the ground too far and too close all at once. He wanted to run—maybe behind the big flag where the cloth flapped softly and didn’t hurt his ears. But his feet wouldn’t move. 

Tanisha’s stomach tightened. She stood at the edge of the stage in her pressed white uniform, tricolour sash across her shoulder, the head girl’s badge pinned like a medal. She could feel the teachers’ eyes, the juniors’ admiration, the perfect image she’d worked years to build. 

Her first instinct was to march right over, slap those smirks off their faces, and tell them they were the stupid ones, the real idiots. She wanted to spit the words at them—Go fuck off. You don’t get to call him that. 

But her feet didn’t move. Because another voice, the quieter, poisonous one in her head, was already asking—What will they think of you? The head girl, standing up for the school’s pagal boy? Will they still respect you? Or will they start looking at you like they look at him?

She hated herself for hearing that voice. She hated that she had spent years keeping a standoffish distance between them, as if his world and hers never touched. Yet, standing there under the oppressive August sun, watching him twist his fingers and click them while still looking at her as if she were the only safe harbor left, something within her gave way. 

A raging heat was swelling, burning her fear, shame, and years of niggardly distance. She did not move toward him. Not yet. The distance between them changed. There was this ongoing internal debate that had finally come about. She couldn't tell what she was going to do next, but she knew one thing for sure: she would never again go back to being that girl who pretended he was just some other kid. Something snapped in her. 

Not in anger alone but also in the way that an overstressed rope breaks. She could feel her pulse far too loud in her ears-thud, thud, thud-drowning out the giggling, the whispering, and the barest cruel echoes of pagal. Varun stopped clicking so much, the spinning becoming more loose and frantic, louder, sharp like teeth on glass. 

His eyes were locked with hers in quiet pleading. The girl suddenly knew that by now, the boy was not-for-help. He was-for-her. She disappeared towards him before her mind could tell her to stop. One step, then another, the polished soles of her shoes clicked against the tiles. The voices halted. Laughter stopped mid-breath. 

She approached the boy and crouched down until they were face-to-face. The boy's hands twitched with fingers flaring and curling, but the moment he saw her near him, something loosened inside him. She reached out, grasped his wrists ever so gently—for no reason to restrain him, just to assert that she was there. The eyes weighed heavy on the air. She could feel them crawling across her back, heavy with judgment, confused louder than the August cicadas. "Varun… hey," she said softly.

He blinked and asked in his earnest, sincere manner, "Didi… what does pagal mean?" Her heart almost gave way. Heat rose in her cheeks—not from the sun, but from a helpless rage building within. She didn't know what to say for a second. How do you explain cruelty to someone who never learned to give it back? How do you explain a word meant to cut someone down when all they have ever done is try to give it back? 

Her throat tightened, and she put her hands on his shoulders. "It means… special, Varun. Very, very special. The kind of special that other people cannot comprehend. And sometimes… when people can't understand something, they begin to mock it. But that doesn't mean they're right." 

Varun frowned slightly, his eyes searching hers as if trying to ascertain whether he could believe her. A nod followed, small in volume, felt more like a record being filed in his brain. That was all the confirmation she needed. She then turned to meet the gaze of those boys who had been laughing the loudest and the girls trying not to smile. Her voice was steady, almost casual, and it rolled down the rows: "He's my brother. If any of you ever call him pagal again, you'll have me to answer to." The silence was deafening. Several looked away. One boy's grin fell flat, like wet paper. She didn't stay to witness more.

She slipped her hand into Varun's and started away, the warmth of that small, damp hand grounding her in a way she hadn't anticipated. Her badge still shone on her chest, but it no longer felt like the same badge. Because at that moment, Tanisha knew—the head girl, the topper, the flawless reputation—none of it meant anything if she couldn’t stand next to her brother. They walked back toward their bus in silence, the noise of the celebration fading behind them. Tanisha’s grip tightened just slightly. She knew her brother would face this kind of thing again—maybe tomorrow, maybe next week and she couldn’t always protect him. But today, she could walk with him. And sometimes, that was enough.

Winning pieces are published as received.

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Fiction Potluck

July 2025

Second Place Winner:

Apoorva Goyal

By day, Apoorva Goyal crunches numbers as a banker; by night, she escapes into worlds built with words. A storyteller at heart, she loves capturing emotions that linger beyond the page. When not writing, she is painting vibrant moments or joyfully chasing after her little one.