When asked what freedom meant to her, Nina Simone, in a 1968 interview, first evaded the question, deflecting it back at the interviewer. She says it’s a feeling, and how do you describe a feeling? How do you explain to someone, who may not have experienced it, what it’s like to be in love? She says she has felt it sometimes on stage. Freedom. Finally, she arrives at it. “I’ll tell you what freedom means to me. No Fear!” Her voice has remained in my head for years, perhaps since I first fell into my obsession with her when I was about 18 or 19 or 20, when a Canadian person I’d met gifted me a CD of her best songs. There’s a simplicity to her definition, and yet I’ve never gotten over all its possible connotations. 

I was thinking back this week to all the flag hoisting ceremonies I attended all my school life, and all the speeches I listened to about freedom or independence. Because this year marked the 75th year of Indian independence from British colonialism, I returned to her definition, because it seemed to suggest the antithesis of the prevailing social climate.