I WAS BHAGAT SINGH

What’s happening to me? I am not able to breathe, someone is strangling my neck with a rope, I can’t see anything. My face is covered with some cloth. I am dying and I am dead.

“Hey Con wakeup. What’s all that sweat on your face? Why were struggling as if somebody was strangling your neck?” asked my roommate.

“Nothing” I lied. It was 3 AM and my roommate was preparing for his exam next day when he got distracted by my wierd behavior, I suppose.

But what about the dream? What is all that about? I can still feel the pain. Thinking so I lied on my bed facing the brilliant view of Chicago Downtown skyline from my room. I am able to recollect my dream or at least parts of it.

I was reading a book written by Vladimir Lenin, a Communist revolutionary of Russia when someone called me. I was asked to get ready. Everyone around me was so down as if someone was dead. Later I was led into an empty ground, which looked more like a place where people are supposedly hanged. Meanwhile 2 other people who seem to know me, even them as high-spirited as proud as me, joined me. But I don’t know the reason why.

All three of us were then directed to get on to the wooden platform, which all 3 of us thought as a dais to make our voice reach crores of people. Then our faces were covered by a black cloth. Before I could realize that we were being hanged we were already hanged. I could still feel Rajguru and Sukhdev(how do I know their names!) struggle for breathe on my either side. Then a voice started in my brain,

“Con this is the pain many of us went through to make our Mother free from British government hoping that at least our Indians would take good care of her. But. . . . . my breathe I am not able to breathe. . . . . . .Indians right from the day we got freedom we are just fighting not with outsiders like then but with ourselves among brothers. In turn giving our leaders ample of scope to exploit us on our weakness to fight with our own brothers. And you Con and people like you . . . . . . . . . . . .my eyes are going blind, my breathe has almost stopped . . . . . . . . leave our Mother to suffer in the hands of some greedy ones and leave to get hold of your dollar dreams. Even I could have done a good job got married and have fun throughout my life making you all still suffer like dogs under British rule. But instead I am dying for you, that you who don’t give a damn about what is happening to the country. I am a failure, my death is a failure all our sacrifices are failures just because we took over the reign from foreigners and handed it over to inefficient Indians who grow up to be called as NRIs than Is(Indians).I could feel no movement of Rajguru or Sukhdev on my sides and I know even it is my time now to die a death which is of no use and which will definitely go into vain.But remember one thing Con, this is the pain we all went through for the future of which you are part of. Jai Hind”

I am still looking at beautiful skyline of Chicago downtown and then said to myself “aah! Com’on man it’s just a dream; more of a nightmare. Forget it. What a beautiful skyline!”