The revolutions you didnu2019t know daLREEN Ramos dalreen. ramos@ mid- day. com HISTORY is broadly defined as the study of past events. Among this pool of incidents, only a few fish make it to your textbook. And so, many are forgotten. Starting this week, theatre stalwart Mahesh Dattaniu2019s play, Snapshots Of A Fervid Sunrise, gets you to take a deep dive into history and pay heed to the lives of Khudiram Bose and Thillayaadi Valliamai u2014 names that are perhaps alien to history books in school. The two died young, but it is their love for the nation that lives on in the soul of the movements fighting for democracy today.

A staunch opponent of British rule in India and their policy of the partition of Bengal in 1905, Bose along with Bengali revolutionary Prafulla Chaki attempted to assassinate the magistrate Douglas Kingsford, who was infamous for hating freedom fighters, by throwing a bomb on his carriage. But accidentally, he blew up the wrong carriage and was hanged to death when he was 18 years old. On the other hand, Valliamai, chose the path of non- violence.