Netaji at Azad Maidan

I see him there, in the throngs at Azad Maidan, wearing a side-cap, his hair neatly combed, slick at his nape, head held high, lips pursed in silent determination, and his shoulders drooped with some unaccountable weight. Hunger strikes and human strikes, young hands raised in hope and anticipation, angered at the Kasabs, the tolerant us, the depleting life styles, the increasing price of lentils. My hands freeze in time, and my heart drums. I ask him how is he alive? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead in Taipei? His ashes in that temple in Tokyo? No, he says. He never died and he is carrying his burden ever since. And all that we are forced to eat are potatoes and the load of bullshit fed by the whitewashed faces, the turban-clad Indian man, and the saree clad phoren mem by the daily-getting-richer leeches and the lying, cheating and swindling businessmen. What burden, I ask. Isn’t his dream realized? I wave around. See, I say. We have achieved freedom. He looks around, then at me, Are you, he says, Free?