(First-person POV – Indra Deka)
The screams hadn't stopped echoing in the alleys.
When I walked out of that police station, chains shattered and cell doors hanging loose like broken teeth, the night air was thick with smoke from burning patrol wagons. The prisoners I'd freed—farmers, students, old men with fire still in their eyes—ran in all directions, shouting slogans that had been beaten out of them only days ago. The British thought Lahore would sleep tonight. They were wrong.
One constable tried to bar my way, a Lee–Enfield trembling in his hands. I didn't even slow down. My shoulder hit him like a charging rhino—because that's what I was now, wasn't I? Compact, unstoppable mass. He flew back into a brick wall, unconscious before he slid to the ground.
By the time I reached Anarkali Bazaar, the crowd was swelling. People stared at me—blood on my knuckles, shirt torn, eyes sharp as a hawk's—and they knew. They didn't need a name yet. They just knew I was one of them.
That night, Lahore turned into a storm. My presence was the spark, but the city had been dry tinder for decades. British police stations were pelted with stones. Soldiers who tried to hold the streets were forced back by sheer numbers. And every time they thought they had me cornered, I'd crash through like a bull elephant in musk, tossing men and rifles aside as if they were made of straw.
But I wasn't stupid. I knew the British wouldn't just let this go. Reinforcements would come—better armed, more ruthless. Punjab was already tense after Bhagat Singh's execution; my face would be on their wanted posters by sunrise.
So, before dawn, I vanished from the streets. Not running, no—that wasn't my style. I left behind a trail of whispers, a few smuggled crates of stolen rifles for the local fighters, and a clear message burned into the wood of the main police gate with hot tar:
> "India does not kneel."
For the next two weeks, I stayed in Punjab's villages, training farmers how to handle a rifle, showing young men how to use the terrain to ambush convoys, and drilling them in hand-to-hand combat. Wherever I went, the British bled morale.
But news travels faster than trains. Word reached me that Assam—my Assam—was under tighter British surveillance. Koch families were being harassed, leaders quietly taken away in the night. That was my blood, my soil. And while Punjab was in good hands now, Assam needed me.
So, one fog-heavy morning, I boarded a cargo train under a false name. The British knew I was somewhere in Punjab, but they didn't expect me to slip halfway across the subcontinent.
When I finally stepped onto the banks of the Brahmaputra again, I felt it—home. But I also felt something else. The fight in Punjab had been just the beginning. The British had seen me now, and they would come harder.
Good.
Because this time, I wasn't just going to rattle their cages.
I was going to rip the entire British Raj apart, piece by piece, until their Empire bled out on Indian soil.
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