And The Legend Lived On
The man, his breaths ragged, his back pressed against a wall of the bell tower, clasped a revolver to his side. The air, thunderous with gunfire mere moments ago, suffocated him with its silence now - a void betraying his vulnerability.
One last bullet.
He would remain free.
*****
He was fifteen, studying to be a Sanskrit scholar, when Brigadier-General Dyer ordered his men to open fire on a gathering of unarmed political protesters. Exits were blocked, snares were laid, no warnings given to disperse. It had been a massacre.
He heard from classmates how Dyer had ordered his men to point their .303 Lee-Enfield repeater rifles at the densest sections of the crowd. How each bullet had ripped through two, sometimes three people. How Dyer’s superiors had commended his actions in the immediate aftermath. Churchill’s subsequent bleating about the incident being monstrous - what difference had it made? No one had stopped Dyer.
He was fifteen and his India was bleeding. He answered Gandhi’s call to action.
*****
He stood outside the bell tower, waiting for Yashpal. They needed to iron out the details.
The No.8 Down Train would pass Allahabad tomorrow, carrying bags of money. Taxes collected from farmers toiling barren patches of land in the burning tropical sun, from shopkeepers selling bangles to giggling teenage girls, from widows down on their hands and knees mopping the bungalows of their British lords and masters. The sweat, the tears of millions of his brothers, millions of his sisters. All to fill the bursting coffers of a distant, uncaring king.
He laid his plans as he waited. Yashpal would board as a passenger and pull the emergency-stop chain a few kilometres outside Allahabad. The rest of them would steal aboard, armed with their Colts. The guards would be no trouble. In their hubris, the British had taken to having the tax coach escorted by only three men. They could be overpowered, hampered as they would be by their unwieldy rifles.
Glad for the shadows of dusk, he waited.
*****
He was seventeen, marching behind Lajpat Rai to protest the Salt Act that forced Indians to pay a large levy on the staple. A peaceful, Gandhian protest led by a man who advocated for the lower castes, for women to be educated.
He watched as a British Police Superintendent, surrounded by his constabulary, approached them. He looked on horrified as Rai - that progressive voice of reason - was silenced forever by a maniac drunk on his own power. Beaten to death with a stick. For salt.
He fled down an alleyway amidst the chaos, his mind aflame. Gandhi had said that an eye for an eye would make the world blind. But if this was what non-violence led to, he would gladly walk in darkness the rest of his days.
It had led to his first arrest. Conspiracy to murder Police Superintendent James Scott.
What’s your name, the judge had asked.
Azad, he had replied with the easy insolence of youth.
Azad, the Urdu word for ‘free’.
He had escaped the hangman’s noose on account of insufficient evidence. But, much like Lajpat Rai’s wounds that fateful day Azad was born, his India bled on.
*****
Something was wrong. Yashpal was late. His eyes swept the area. A gaunt cow crossed the road to nibble on some weeds. A trader fanned the basket of sweets in front of him, dislodging flies that settled back down almost immediately. A few barefoot children chased one another, kicking up dust, their laughter a raucous counterpoint to the weary people making their weary ways back to their weary homes. The humdrum of small-town India.
Yet his instincts blared a klaxon call. Should he leave and contact Yashpal later?
But the train. It would pass by tomorrow, bearing away with it their funding for future attempts against the British.
He knelt, arcing his palm through the dusty ground. Shackled though she was, his motherland breathed beneath him, within him.
He sighed. He would wait inside the bell tower.
*****
He was twenty two when he met Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s choice for leader of a free India.
Why do you fight like this, Nehru had asked. You live with a target on your back. And for what? Brief sorties, nameless raids, a few disorganised murders? Pinpricks to the British Empire.
Because, he had responded, Azad is a symbol. You think people care about your political machinations? No, they worry where their next meal will come from. My nameless raids and disorganised murders are the legends that give people the strength to carry on, to fight on.
*****
As the last light of dusk faded, a squad of policemen gathered outside the bell tower. Eighteen constables, one British officer.
So Yashpal had sold him out. For what, he wondered. A promise of clemency? Didn’t he realise there was a bigger prison around his smaller one? How could one be free in a nation encaged?
Six bullets. Maybe he could take the British bastard with him. He climbed to the top of the tower.
The battle was achingly brief. Five shots from him, a multitude from them. The bastard lived, having stayed well back. Typical.
So no final disorganised murder, he thought, smiling to himself.
One last bullet. He sucked in a deep breath. Looking up, he grabbed the clapper of the bell and smashed it against the lip, once, twice, ten times.
Azad, they called him. The Free.
Again the bell tolled. Again, again, again. Calling to the people of Allahabad. Startling the constables crouched at the foot of the tower. Unnerving John Bower, the soon-to-be-knighted head of the Allahabad Police Force who had valiantly taken down the infamous outlaw Azad.
Azad, they called him. Free he would remain.
Again and again the bell rang as people congregated. It rang as, up in the bell tower, a 24-year-old man raised a revolver to his temple.
And then, inside the bell tower, as outside it, his India bled.
(NYCMidnight 2022 Flash Fiction Round 2 - 3rd place)
