The ringing of a bell from somewhere nearby makes him jump up in shock.
It is midnight exactly, and today – for it is day now, despite the darkened skies and shining stars above him - today is the day he becomes a nation, becomes India.
India.The name sounds so strange rolling off his tongue, so foreign, and yet it's perfect, it is him. He almost smiles because now – now he has a name.
After centuries – no, millennia – of tribe and kingdom, of empire and colony, of being a thousand cities with a thousand names, finally he is himself, finally he is one. He is free and he is a nation, and he is India.
He should be happy about that, he supposes. He should be celebrating now, making sweets and eating them, dancing for joy, because it is midnight and he is free. After nearly two hundred years he finally has no master but himself, no ruler but his own people; he should be offering his prayers in a temple or a mosque or a church or a gurudwara or something, on this great day, this auspicious occasion. He should be distributing sweets and singing and dancing and making speeches and watching fireworks.
He should, most certainly, not be here; here in a burning village somewhere in the Punjab, head bowed and eyes closed, choking on the stench of blood and guts and burning bodies. He should be listening to great men promising great things, not to children sobbing and women screaming, or to men shouting ugly, violent things at each other. He should be in a well-lit auditorium decorated with garlands of sweet, fragrant flowers, proud and joyous and jubilant - not here crouching in the half-darkness, swinging sticks and blades and whatever else he can find at Indians and Pakistanis and whoever else he can find, listening to his own voice shouting ugly, violent things, and not having an inkling of what he is doing.
He should not be here, wherever 'here' is, and he should not be doing this (whatever 'this' is). He knows that and yet he cannot stop, because he is blind now, blind with joy and rage and sorrow and hatred, blind with feelings he doesn't even know how to describe. He is here, fighting and killing and destroying blindly, because it is midnight, he is free, and he is a nation now with a brother he never asked for and with hatred he never wanted.
He is here driving blades through the men in front of him, watching men rape helpless women, watching children die in burning huts - he is watching them or maybe he is them; he doesn't really know at this point.
It is midnight on a mild August day, and he is free. He is free. He repeats that to himself for what seems like the millionth time - it is a day of joy. Of freedom and triumph.
(Of blood and madness and hatred for his fellow countrymen. Of senseless violence and burning hatred, the sort of hatred that destroys all that's around it, that reduces even the kindest people to snarling, savage beasts.)
He is free.
I am aware that Partition is still a sensitive issue, so if this is, in any way, offensive to anyone reading this, then please feel free to tell me in a review or a PM and I'll make changes, or take it down if you want me to. Cheers!