Birla House, New Delhi — Night, 16 August 1947
The house was dark except for one room.
Birla House slept uneasily these days, its wide lawns no longer symbols of calm but of vigilance. Guards moved softly along the perimeter. Every shadow felt like a question.
I had not announced my visit.
I did not need to.
Gandhi always knew.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, a spinning wheel beside him, oil lamp flickering weakly at his side. The room smelled faintly of soap, paper, and something else—detachment, perhaps.
He looked smaller than history allowed him to be.
"Ah," he said without turning. "You have come from the camps."
It was not a question.
"Yes," I replied.
He nodded slowly, as if confirming something he already carried.
"Sit," he said, patting the floor.
I hesitated.
Jawaharlal Nehru did not sit on floors during official meetings.
Tonight, I did.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The wheel turned.The lamp flickered.Outside, Delhi breathed.
"You are very tired," Gandhi said at last.
The historian in me noted the observation.The man inside Nehru felt exposed.
"Yes," I said again.
"You have seen freedom's first harvest," he continued. "It is always bitter."
I closed my eyes.
"I know how this ends," I said.
The words escaped before I could stop them.
Gandhi's hands stilled.
He turned to look at me then—not with surprise, but with curiosity.
"Ends?" he repeated gently. "My dear Jawahar, nations do not end. They only learn."
"No," I said, my voice lower now. "This phase. This path. I know the accusations that will come. The blame. The regrets."
He studied my face carefully.
"You speak as if you have already lived it."
The room felt suddenly smaller.
I had written about this man.
About his contradictions.His stubbornness.His refusal to wield power even when it begged him to.
Sitting across from him, I understood the danger.
Gandhi did not need authority.
He undermined it simply by existing.
"Bapu," I said, using the name Nehru had always used. "What if restraint costs lives?"
"What if force costs the soul?" he replied calmly.
The question hung between us, unanswered and unanswerable.
"There are calls for stronger action," I continued. "The army. The police. Emergency powers."
"Yes," he said. "There always are."
"You oppose them."
"I oppose violence pretending to be necessity."
The historian in me bristled.
History had not been kind to this stance.
"People are dying," I said. "Not in theory. Not in ideals. On roads. In camps."
Gandhi's gaze did not waver.
"And if you save them by becoming what you fought," he asked softly, "who will you be saving them for?"
Silence returned.
I realized then that this was not a debate.
It never had been.
Gandhi was not trying to win.
He was trying to anchor.
"I cannot afford purity," I said at last.
"No leader can," he replied. "But neither can a nation afford cynicism at birth."
I laughed bitterly. "You ask for impossible balances."
"Yes," he said simply. "That is why leadership hurts."
I stood.
I felt suddenly older than Nehru's years.
"You will not stay in Delhi," I said quietly. "You'll go to Bengal. To Punjab. You'll put yourself in danger."
"Yes."
"You know what will happen if—"I stopped.
I knew exactly what would happen.
He smiled faintly.
"You fear my death," he said.
"I fear what it will do to the country."
"Then fear less," he replied. "And act better."
As I turned to leave, he spoke once more.
"Jawahar."
I paused.
"You cannot outrun history," he said. "But you can decide what it teaches."
Outside, the night air felt heavy.
I knew—with a certainty that no historian should ever possess—that this was one of the last long conversations we would ever have.
I had not changed that.
I had not even tried.
And for the first time since my rebirth, the question was no longer can I change history?
It was—
do I have the right to?
Behind me, Gandhi returned to his wheel.
Ahead of me, India waited.
And somewhere between the two, Jawaharlal Nehru—historian, statesman, prisoner of tomorrow—walked back into the dark, carrying a future he could neither escape nor fully control.