Pingali Venkayya Garu, a freedom fighter and the man who designed our national flag, was born on 2 August, 1876 in Bhatlapennumaru in the Divi taluk of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh.

   Venkayya belonged to a Telugu Brahmin family. After finishing his primary education at Challapalli and schooling at the Hindu High School, Masulipatnam, he went to Colombo to finish his Senior Cambridge. On returning to India, he worked as a Railway Guard in Bangalore and Madras and later joined the government service as a plague officer at Bellary. Venkayya also went to Lahore where he joined the Anglo-Vedic College and learnt Japanese, Urdu and History.

  He had a doctorate in Geology and was a multilingual personality. He was popularly known as ‘Diamond Venkayya’ as he was an expert in diamond mining. He was also called ‘Patti Venkayya’ (Cotton Venkayya), because he devoted his time studying staple varieties of cotton....