To Vishwanathan Jayara man, there are only two things that matter in life the run and the spin. The 54-year-old financial advisor and chief accounts officer (construction) at Southern Railway wakes up every day at 1am, or as he puts it, "long before the birds begin to sing", to spin yarn on his charkha. For two hours, Vishwanathan sips on green tea and works the spindle, with no one to keep him company, save a picture of Gandhiji spinning the charkha , which he has placed by his side.Once two hours and 250m of yarn are spun, Vishwanathan gets started on the other integral part of his morning - his 32km run, wearing a khadi shirt and shorts made from the yarn that he has spun, which has earned him the moniker of the `Gandhian runner' on Chennai roads. In 2009, when Vishwanathan visited Abarmati Ashram, one of the residences Sabarmati Ashram, one of the residences of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he learned about the ideology of `charkhaspinning' and how it fired up the Indian masses during the independence movement."I was told that Gandhi had even held a competition to create a portable charkha so people could spin wherever they were. I immediately bought one, which cost `475 then," says Vishwanathan, who has since then never missed a day of spinning, even carrying it with him on his travels. "I have never had a problem with the airport authorities even though I carry it as hand baggage. If they ask me, I explain to them about Gandhi and offer to spin for them," says Vishwanathan, who maintains a daily log of metres spun as a `contact' named `charkha' on his mobile phone.Across the country, from Gandhi Bhawan in New Delhi, where Dr Sita Bimbrahw conducts charkha spinning certification courses, to the villages of Rajasthan where RS Hiremath's e-charkhas help villagers power their homes as they spin yarn, to back home in Chennai, where VR Devika, a scholar on Gandhi `spins a yarn' at schools as India app[roaches its 70th year of Independence, the wheels of the charkha are still turning. And telling the story of self-reliance, resilience, and the Indian way of life.While, for Viswanathan, the charkha is a means of meditation, for Dr Bimbrahw, a former Hindi professor and a staunch Gandhian, there is a memory woven into "every millimetre of yarn" she creates. "Gandhi brought the country together with this wheel and it is something we should never forget," says Bhimrahw, who spins 200m of yarn a day."Though I teach charkha spinning once a week, I spin the wheel every day at home," says Bimbrahw, who wears only khadi and leads a simple life "reminiscent of the one Gandhi and other freedom fighters led". "We introduced the three-month charkha spinning course three years ago," says the 78-year-old, adding that in January this year, they added on a khadi weaving course."When we started the course, my students were the children of gardeners and labourers who saw making yarn as a way to earn a living. Now I am getting ex-army officers, college students, and professors, who want to make the charkha a part of their lives," says Bimbrahw.The government, says Hiremath, creator of the e-charkha, now has schemes and subsidies to keep the spirit of khadi and the charkha alive. "The charkhas that I have created generate electricity when they are spun. They produce enough power to burn a light bulb or run a radio set," says the Bangalorebased social innovator who is partnering with the government on its `green khadi' concept. A second type of charkha that he has invented works like a power loom but runs on solar energy. "That's also being used in villages in Gujarat and Rajasthan because it maintains the sanctity of khadi as a handspun cloth, while reducing manual labour," adds Hiremath.Over the last decade, Devika, founder of the Chennai-based Aseema Trust - which aims to build bridges between traditional performing arts and educa tion and Mahatma Gandhi and his ideas of truth and non-violence - has been conducting charkha work shops across schools in TN as a means of getting students to connect with the ideologies behind the Inde pendence movement. "I've been speaking about the charkha for the last 30 years," says Devika, who did a PhD on the communication strategies and symbols of Gandhi. "He used cotton and salt, the two things that every Indian could connect with and that was how he brought the masses together to fight for freedom," says Devika, who spins on a charkha at home, and makes garlands of yarn, which she gifts people."They look simple when compared to other flower gar lands but has so much more mean ng," says Devika, adding that despite charkhas being available for sale online and in places like Sabarmati and the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan at Srivilliputhur in TN, it is getting increasingly difficult to source the pressed cotton, used to create the yarn.While Devika sources her pressed cotton from Srivilliputhur, Vishwanathan gets his from Sabarmati. "It costs me Rs 1,500 to spin enough yarn to make five shirts. "I wonder if it was that expensive for Gandhi too," laughs Vishwanathan.