When you are breathing in a bit of Gujarat, the whiff of Bombay (Yes that’s what we want to call it) comes coyly and waves at you. That’s because we are born of its heart and continue to resonate with its soul. A brief history lesson for the uninitiated – Post independence, Bombay State as it was then known, was created with the merger of the British territories of the Bombay Presidency with the princely states of the Baroda, Western India and Gujarat States and Deccan States political agencies.

On 1 November 1956, Bombay State was re-organized under the States Reorganization Act, absorbing various territories including the Saurashtra and Kutch States, which ceased to exist. The new state had a mostly Gujarati-speaking north and a Marathi-speaking south. Agitation by Gujarati nationalists with the Mahagujarat Movement, and Marathi nationalists with the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, for their own states led to the split of Bombay state on linguistic lines; on 1 May 1960, it became the new states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Since then, each year, 1st of May is celebrated as Gujarat Day and Maharashtra day, in both the states respectively, to commemorate a new beginning of sorts; to help people resonate with what their predecessors had fought hard for and earned for their future generations; to help people identify with their roots and help them find themselves; a place to belong to. Jai Garvi Gujarat as they call it.

Gujarat has since then celebrated its enterprising spirit amalgamating various cultures – Marathis from the princely state of Baroda, Marwaris from the neighboring state of Rajasthan, Parsis from the distant Persia and many other communities. It’s the land of white sands of Kutch spawning gloriously under the sulphur sun, a land of contained drama unfolding every Navratri, a parcel of easy nostalgia because the people are so simple, an explosion of flavors of its food. The land is a meditation on what people can achieve in the face of adversities. We can sing paeans and fill reams on what Gujarat has achieved in so many years churning entrepreneurs and politicians and artists and social workers but we aren’t the kinds just gleefully reminiscing on what we’ve already done.

There is a lot to be done and a lot to be shared with the rest of our country – our models of development and the undying, relentless spirit to win but most importantly how we spring back from each calamity – natural or the ones created by us. Let’s embrace the diversity, the heterogeneity, the shades of Gujarat and move towards a better, brighter and Saras place for everyone to cherish.