I had argued about Jawaharlal Nehru for most of my adult life.
In conference halls, I defended him.In classrooms, I dissected him.In articles, I criticized him with the confidence that only distance gives.
Nehru the idealist.Nehru the aristocrat.Nehru who trusted too much.Nehru who chose dreams over hard borders.
He was a chapter.A subject.A man safely sealed inside books.
Until the books disappeared.
The first thing I noticed was the weight.
Not metaphorical weight—real, crushing heaviness. My chest rose with effort, as though air itself demanded permission. My limbs felt older than my memories, disciplined into stillness by decades of habit.
Then came the sound.
A low roar, distant but relentless—voices layered upon voices. Chanting. Crying. Celebrating. Mourning. A nation trying to breathe all at once.
I opened my eyes.
High ceilings. Colonial architecture. White walls stained faintly yellow by age and cigarette smoke. A desk ahead of me, cluttered with papers I recognized before I could read them.
Draft speeches.Cabinet notes.Foreign correspondence.
My hand—my hand—rested on a familiar page.
"Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny…"
My pulse spiked.
No.This was impossible.
I pushed myself upright, heart pounding hard enough to hurt. The body responded with practiced grace, not panic. That terrified me more than anything else.
I stood and walked to the mirror.
The man who looked back at me did not look surprised.
Sharp nose. Tired eyes. Hair thinning at the temples. A face I had seen on currency, in documentaries, in black-and-white photographs captioned Prime Minister of India.
Jawaharlal Nehru stared back.
And somewhere deep inside this borrowed body, something old and familiar stirred—like a door that had always been open, waiting for me to notice.
My mind rebelled.
This was not how rebirth stories worked. There were supposed to be lights, voices, gods with terrible senses of humor.
Instead, I had woken up inside the most analyzed man of twentieth-century India.
I checked the date.
15 August 1947.
The historian in me went cold.
The midnight of freedom.
Outside, the noise swelled. Delhi was alive—if chaos could be called life. I moved toward the window, each step unlocking memories that were not mine but felt intimate all the same.
Nehru's memories.
A childhood of privilege.Years of prison.The constant shadow of Gandhi.The impossible weight of expectation.
And layered over it all—my memories.
Partition trains.Refugee columns.Mass graves I had only seen in photographs.
I knew what this night meant.
Freedom had arrived.
So had blood.
A knock at the door jolted me.
"Panditji," a voice said softly. "It is almost time."
Time.
For the speech.
For the promise.
For words that would echo through history—words I had quoted, critiqued, and taught.
Only now, they were not text.
They were a responsibility.
I looked again at the speech on the desk. Nehru's handwriting was neat, confident, almost hopeful.
I knew how the next ten years would unfold.
I knew which decisions would be praised.Which would be condemned.Which would haunt textbooks forever.
And for the first time in my life, historical certainty felt like a curse.
Because knowing the future did not mean knowing how to survive it.
I picked up the paper.
Outside, a nation waited for its first Prime Minister to tell it what freedom meant.
Inside, a historian wondered if history would forgive him—not for what he would change,
but for what he would allow to happen again.