For 28-year-old Rishik Arya, the Anzac Day dawn service is one of the few Australian traditions he marks each year.
Rishik and I went to university in Sydney together, but his connection to the annual commemorations was never something I’d given any thought to before.
My own grandfather served in the Australian Defence Force, so my own attendance at Anzac Day commemorations was a given in during my childhood.
Talking to Rishik on the eve of the centenary of the Gallipoli mission, he told me that it wasn’t until his late teens – almost two decades after migrating to Australia with his family – that he came to his own realisation about the significance of Anzac Day.
“It wasn't something I really knew about when I was younger,” he says.
“The first service I went to was while I was in college, in Epping. I had some friends who were pretty patriotic about it.
“It was a really good service, I still remember it.”
While sharing breakfast with diggers after that first service a decade ago, Rishik says he began to understand the spirit of the commemorations.
“Obviously we’re here to pay our respects and remember what these people did, but it’s also about community,” he says.
“We don’t have that many traditions and this is one of the greatest ones and it’s only 100 years old. It brings people together.
“Everyone comes down here and has the same purpose.”
Rishik now makes his way to Coogee Beach in Sydney every year, not only to mark the service of the Anzacs, but also the Indian forces that fell at Gallipoli.
An estimated 16,000 Indian troops served alongside Australian forces, with 1600 becoming casualties of war.
Four Gurkha battalions and one infantry battalion of 14th Sikhs served at Gallipoli, as well as thousands of mule drivers.
Historians believe the fatal stand at Anzac Cove is what formed the basis of true friendship between Indians and Australians, something that Rishik appreciates.
I travelled to Coogee Beach before dawn on Anzac Day to stand alongside him as we watched the sun rise behind the piles of wreaths laid for the fallen.
Moments like those are the reason he continues to mark the day each year.
“You feel like you’re on the same page as your mates,” he says.
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