# The Weight of Two Lifetimes
**Prime Minister's Council Chamber, South Block, New Delhi**
**16 August 1947, 5:47 AM**
The meeting had stretched through the night and into the late hours of August 15th, finally bleeding into the pre-dawn darkness of India's second day of independence. The rain had stopped sometime around four, leaving the air clean and cool. Now the corridors of South Block glowed faintly in the first warmth of dawn—that particular quality of light that makes promises seem possible and burdens seem bearable.
Dr. Saraswati Sinha gathered her papers with the methodical precision of someone who'd learned that organization was a form of resistance. Three stacks: immediate reforms, structural changes, long-term vision. Each represented battles she'd have to fight—against orthodoxy, against inertia, against men who believed women's education was decoration rather than foundation.
She stood, adjusting her sari's pallu, and bowed slightly—a gesture that managed to convey respect without submission, acknowledgment without deference.
"Prime Minister, Sardarji—I'll have my comprehensive proposals ready before the upcoming parliamentary session. The foundation stones must be laid before the speeches begin, or we'll spend years debating monuments while children remain illiterate."
Anirban nodded, fatigue pressing behind his eyes but his voice steady. "Make sure your words are as sharp as your ideas, Doctor. The press will be hungry for scandal—a woman minister, a renegade princess, a radical education policy. They'll try to reduce revolution to gossip. Don't let them."
Patel gave her a gentle nod of respect, his severe features softening in a way that few people ever witnessed. "You remind me of a young Kamala Devi—only with a blueprint and a blowtorch instead of speeches and symbolism. She changed minds. You'll change systems. That's harder, and more permanent."
Saraswati's smile was faint but genuine, carrying the satisfaction of someone who'd been underestimated her entire life and had learned to turn that into advantage. "I'll take that as the compliment it was intended to be, Sardarji. Though I should warn you both—when the orthodox Hindus and orthodox Muslims and orthodox everyone else unite in their horror at girls learning physics, I'll expect your support."
"You'll have it," Anirban said simply. "Build your revolution, Doctor. We'll hold the line."
She nodded once, then turned and walked out into the corridor, her white sari trailing like a streak of light against the shadowed floor—a ghost of the future moving through the corridors of the past. The door closed behind her with a soft click that seemed to seal something important, though none of them could have articulated exactly what.
The room suddenly felt older, heavier. The absence of her sharp intellect and youthful energy left behind something more weighted with history—two men who'd fought for freedom in different ways, now facing the harder task of building something that could survive their deaths.
---
Patel remained seated for a long moment, his hands folded on the table before him in a posture that suggested prayer more than rest. He looked at the map of India pinned to the wall—its glowing outlines of princely states, its fresh borders still bleeding with partition's violence, its ambitious promises written in ink that could still be erased by incompetence or cowardice.
The ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, its rhythm hypnotic. Outside, Delhi was beginning to stir—vendors preparing their stalls, early worshippers heading to temples and mosques, the city waking to its second day of independence without quite understanding what that meant yet.
"You know, Anirban," Patel said after a pause that stretched into contemplation, his voice carrying the weight of years and battles, "I'm not easily impressed by youth. I've seen too many brilliant young men mistake eloquence for wisdom, passion for competence. I've watched educated fools lead movements into disasters because they could quote Shakespeare but couldn't read a budget."
He turned his gaze from the map to the Prime Minister, his eyes sharp despite the exhaustion that lined his face.
"But I see now why Subhas spoke your name to me before... before he made his necessary choice to focus on the East rather than competing for power in Delhi."
Anirban's eyes lifted sharply, fatigue momentarily forgotten. Something in Patel's tone suggested this wasn't casual reminiscence—it was testimony, carefully delivered at a moment chosen for maximum impact.
"Netaji spoke of me?" His voice carried genuine surprise. In all his memories—both the lived experiences of this timeline and the historical knowledge from his other life—he'd never known that Bose had specifically recommended him to Patel.
Patel smiled faintly, a rare warmth breaking through the granite of his features like water finding a crack in stone. "He did. Multiple times, in fact. It was late 1945, just after the INA trials had begun turning the tide of public opinion against the British. We met in secret—couldn't let them know that Congress and the INA were coordinating, even though everyone suspected it."
The Sardar's voice took on the cadence of memory, of stories told to preserve truth that official histories would obscure.
"Subhas was different then. The war had aged him—you could see it in his eyes, in the way he moved. But it had also clarified him, burned away the romanticism that sometimes clouded his judgment in earlier years. He'd learned things about power that most freedom fighters never understand because they never actually hold it."
Patel leaned back in his chair, his gaze distant.
"He said to me: 'Patelji, if ever Bharat survives its freedom—and that's not guaranteed, that's the first thing we must understand—it will need a man who can command both steel and silence. Someone who understands that violence prevented is more valuable than violence punished. Someone who can think like a general but move like a ghost.'"
The old statesman's eyes returned to Anirban, sharp and assessing.
"He told me about a young strategist from Bengal—one who'd proven himself in the underground resistance, in the coordination networks, in the dangerous work of keeping communities from tearing each other apart. He said you were the kind of man who could save a city without anyone knowing it needed saving. That you understood the greatest victories leave no bodies to count and no headlines to read."
Anirban looked away, suppressing a shiver that ran down his spine like ice water. He remembered those days—not just from this lifetime's memories of underground work with Subhas, of coded radio messages transmitted from safe houses in north Calcutta, of the networks built among students and dock workers and jute mill laborers who believed in freedom but didn't always agree on what it meant.
But also from the other life, the one that haunted him like a ghost of the future—memories of reading about the Noakhali riots, about Direct Action Day, about violence that in that timeline had been allowed to metastasize into permanent communal poison. In this timeline, he'd been there. He'd stopped it. But the weight of both memories—what happened in one world and what he'd prevented in another—pressed against his consciousness like competing realities trying to occupy the same space.
"I was just one person," Anirban said quietly. "Subhas had the networks, the credibility, the organizational genius. I was just..."
"You were the instrument he trusted with the most important work," Patel interrupted firmly. "Don't diminish that, beta. Subhas could have sent anyone to manage those crises. He sent you. That means something."
---
Patel's tone shifted, becoming lower, more intimate—the voice of someone sharing testimony that mattered.
"When the Noakhali riots broke out last year—October 1946, just two months after Direct Action Day—the initial reports I received from Bengal were... apocalyptic. Hindu-Muslim violence spreading through the district like wildfire. Villages burning. Women being abducted. The kind of communal horror that, once started, feeds on itself until entire regions are poisoned for generations."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"But then the subsequent reports were... unbelievable. Not because the violence had stopped—violence always stops eventually, usually when everyone's exhausted or dead. But because of *how* it stopped. Villages that should have burned to ash were merely damaged. Women who should have been victims were protected by corridors of human shields. Hindu and Muslim neighborhoods that should have descended into reciprocal massacres were instead patrolled by mixed groups who'd been... organized. Somehow."
Patel's eyes gleamed with something that might have been awe.
"The British District Magistrate's report called it 'unprecedented local cooperation arising from traditional Bengali communal harmony.' The fool actually believed that. But I sent my own people—Congress intelligence officers who knew what to look for—and they came back with a very different story."
He stood, walking to the window where dawn was painting Delhi in shades of amber and rose.
"They found RSS cadres—men who by all rights should have been leading retaliatory violence against Muslims—instead forming defensive perimeters around Muslim quarters. They found Muslim League youth who should have been burning Hindu temples instead rebuilding them alongside Hindu volunteers. They found village headmen who'd been convinced to sign public pledges of non-violence that were actually enforced."
Patel turned back to face Anirban, his expression carrying profound respect.
"And at the center of it all, coordinating through networks that shouldn't have existed, was a young Congress worker who'd somehow convinced everyone that their anger could serve a better purpose. You used the RSS cadres—men primed for communal violence—and turned them into human shields. You gave them a mission: protect the innocent, regardless of religion."
He returned to his chair, sitting heavily.
"You pacified an entire district in ten days. Ten days, Anirban. Do you understand how impossible that should have been? District magistrates with full police powers, British troops with shoot-on-sight orders—they couldn't stop communal riots. But you did it with organization and psychology and sheer force of will."
Anirban's jaw tightened. The memory was vivid—racing between villages on a commandeered motorcycle, speaking in three different dialects to three different communities, deploying Subhas's returning INA soldiers as peacekeepers, using Congress networks to spread counter-narratives faster than rumors of atrocity could spread. The exhaustion. The fear that one mistake would unleash the violence he was trying to contain. The desperate improvisation when his carefully laid plans encountered the chaos of reality.
"Those people didn't need revenge," Anirban said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of remembered desperation. "They needed someone to believe their anger could serve a purpose. I gave them work—rebuilding houses instead of burning them. I gave them enemies they could actually fight: hunger, displacement, chaos. Abstractions are hard to hate when you're exhausted from construction."
Patel nodded slowly, approval evident in every line of his weathered face.
"And you did it without a single bullet fired. Not one. I have the final casualty report from Noakhali for the period of your... intervention. It's remarkable: some fractured bones from scuffles, minor stab wounds, significant property damage but minimal loss of life. No massacres. No mass rapes. No retaliatory killings that would poison the next three generations."
He leaned forward again, his voice intense.
"But what impressed me most—what made me understand that Subhas was absolutely right about you—was how you documented everything. Every witness statement, every act of cooperation, every moment when communities chose humanity over hatred. You built a record that could be used later, that could prove coexistence was possible even in the worst circumstances."
Patel's eyes locked with Anirban's.
"All documented, meticulously. Hundreds of pages of testimony, photographs, signed statements from Hindu and Muslim community leaders. You wrote every statement, verified every witness account, built an evidentiary record that could withstand scrutiny. That's when I knew you weren't just another orator with a degree and good intentions. You were a planner. A surgeon for chaos. Someone who understood that governance isn't about grand gestures—it's about a thousand small interventions that add up to survival."
---
The old lion's expression shifted, becoming almost tender—a side of Patel that few people ever saw, that he rarely allowed himself to show.
"And during Direct Action Day..." He paused, as if the memory still had power to wound even a year later. "August 16, 1946. The Muslim League called for 'direct action' to achieve Pakistan. Calcutta was a powder keg soaked in kerosene, waiting for a match."
Anirban remembered. God, how he remembered—both the historical accounts from his other life where Calcutta had burned for three days, where thousands died in communal violence that scarred the city's soul, and the desperate reality of this timeline where he and Subhas had worked through the night to prevent catastrophe.
Patel continued, his voice carrying the cadence of a storyteller preserving crucial history.
"The violence started in the morning—Hindu and Muslims attacking each other in the markets, in the streets, in neighborhoods where they'd lived side by side for generations. By noon, the British police had essentially withdrawn, declaring it too dangerous to intervene. By evening, fires were burning in six different neighborhoods, and corpses were floating in the Hooghly."
His voice hardened.
"But by the next morning, the violence had... stopped. Not suppressed through force—stopped. Like a fire that suddenly ran out of fuel. The British Governor's report called it a miracle of exhaustion. The press called it natural limits of mob violence. But I knew better, because I had intelligence reports from our own people embedded in both Hindu and Muslim communities."
Patel stood again, too energized by the memory to remain seated.
"You and Subhas moved people like pieces on a chessboard—INA veterans here, Congress workers there, RSS volunteers in this neighborhood, Muslim League moderates in that one. You cut the streets off like arteries before the poison could spread. You created buffer zones without anyone realizing they were being managed. You turned potential killing grounds into neutral territories patrolled by mixed groups."
He chuckled quietly, without real humor.
"You even fooled the British police, which takes considerable skill. The Commissioner reported that the violence stopped 'due to natural exhaustion and perhaps divine intervention.' The fool. It was no accident. It was architecture—social architecture built in real-time by two men who understood that sometimes the most important battles are the ones no one knows you fought."
Anirban's mind flashed with memories—Subhas's voice crackling over a commandeered police radio, coordinating movements across the city. The cold sweat of moving through hostile neighborhoods at three in the morning, knowing that one wrong encounter could end everything. The desperate gamble of asking Hindu shopkeepers to shelter Muslim families and Muslim dock workers to protect Hindu temples. The sheer audacity of believing that organization could overcome hatred.
"We had help," Anirban said quietly, deflecting the weight of Patel's praise. "Networks that Subhas had built during his underground years. People who trusted him more than they trusted their own anger. INA soldiers who'd learned discipline in combat and could apply it to peacekeeping."
"You had more than help," Patel corrected firmly. "You had strategy. And you had the courage to implement it when everyone else was either paralyzed by fear or actively making things worse. The British wanted the violence to discredit the independence movement. Elements in both communities wanted it to prove the other side was irredeemable. But you and Subhas refused to let that narrative win."
He moved back to the map, his finger tracing the eastern frontier.
"You fooled even the British police. The Governor thought it was luck that the violence stopped at fractured bones and broken windows. But I knew the truth—it was precision. You controlled the chaos without seeming to control it. That's a rare skill, Anirban. Rarer than battlefield courage or political oratory."
---
Patel's tone shifted again, becoming wistful—almost melancholy.
"Subhas is in East Bengal now, of course. Has been since February, when it became clear that partition was inevitable and that East Pakistan would become a bloodbath without immediate intervention. He's commanding his own peace teams—calling them 'civil guards' to avoid alarming the British and Pakistani authorities, but really they're a parallel administration."
He traced Bengal on the map, his finger moving across territory that official maps now divided between India and Pakistan but which Subhas was trying to reclaim through organization rather than warfare.
"The INA men who returned from Burma—the ones who weren't imprisoned or cashiered out of service by the British, the ones who survived the trials—they're his core cadre now. Disciplined, experienced in both combat and governance, trusted by local populations who remember them as soldiers who fought for Indian freedom, not British interests."
Patel's voice carried hope tinged with uncertainty.
"He says the region will calm before mid-September. If that happens—if he can actually stabilize East Bengal without it becoming Pakistani territory or descending into the kind of permanent communal warfare that would make Noakhali look minor—then we might see something unprecedented in post-colonial history."
He looked at Anirban directly, his eyes gleaming with possibility.
"East Bengal could join India peacefully. No partition in the East. No hostile neighbor on that frontier. And if Subhas succeeds there, if he proves that his model of disciplined intervention and cross-communal cooperation actually works at scale..." Patel's voice dropped to something almost conspiratorial. "There's talk of Burma, of Malaya, of regions throughout Southeast Asia where Indian diaspora communities and independence movements might look at what we're building and choose to join rather than fight."
Anirban felt something tighten in his chest—excitement mixed with fear and the weight of knowledge from another timeline. In his other life, East Pakistan had been a source of endless conflict: the language movement, the 1971 war, the refugee crisis that had nearly bankrupted India, the permanent instability of a territory separated from West Pakistan by a thousand miles of hostile India.
But in this timeline, if Subhas could actually prevent that partition, if he could prove that Muslims and Hindus could coexist in a unified Bengal under Indian sovereignty...
"He'll manage it," Anirban said with more confidence than he felt. "He always believed discipline could do what politics never could. That organization trumps ideology. That people will choose order over chaos if you give them a genuine choice backed by credible protection."
Patel nodded, but his expression remained cautious—the pragmatism of a man who'd seen too many confident predictions crumble against reality.
"I hope you're right. Because if he fails, if East Bengal becomes Pakistani territory and then destabilizes the way we both fear it might..." He didn't finish the thought. He didn't need to. They both understood that a hostile East Pakistan would mean permanent insecurity on India's eastern frontier, would mean resources diverted from development to defense, would mean the Partition's wounds never healing.
"And now I see why he wanted you here in Delhi rather than with him in Bengal," Patel continued. "Why he specifically recommended you to me when we were planning the transition of power, when we were trying to figure out who could actually govern versus who could just give inspiring speeches."
The Sardar's voice dropped to something intimate, almost confessional.
"He said: 'Patelji, when Gandhi's dream becomes a nightmare of compromises—and it will, because saints make poor administrators—find Anirban Sen. He'll know where the steel lies beneath the poetry. He'll make the hard choices that need making, and he'll sleep afterward, which is rarer than you think among men who order difficult things.'"
Patel's eyes searched Anirban's face with the intensity of someone trying to read a text written in a language only half-understood.
"He was right, wasn't he? You can make the hard choices. You've already proven it—in Noakhali, in Calcutta, in the way you've maneuvered within Congress to reach this position without making it look like naked ambition. You can order things that will haunt you, and then wake up the next morning and order them again if circumstances demand it."
Anirban met his gaze steadily, knowing this was a test—not of loyalty or capability, but of self-awareness. "I can, Sardarji. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with it. It means I'm willing to be uncomfortable if the alternative is worse. I can live with being haunted if it means children don't grow up in a nation perpetually at war with itself."
"Good," Patel said simply, satisfaction evident in his tone.
"Because leaders who are too comfortable with violence become tyrants. They start to enjoy the power that comes from ordering deaths. And leaders who can't stomach it at all become corpses—or worse, irrelevant, pushed aside by harder men who'll make those choices without the moral weight you carry."
He paused, then added: "You're in the narrow window between those extremes, beta. Stay there. Don't let power seduce you into thinking violence is ever easy. But don't let squeamishness prevent you from doing what survival requires."
A long silence filled the room, broken only by the distant sounds of Delhi waking up—vendors calling their wares, bicycle bells ringing, the city beginning its second day of independence without quite understanding the work that had gone into making that independence possible.
The morning light crept across the map of India, touching Delhi, Bengal, Kashmir—and Hyderabad, that yellow territory that seemed to glow with ominous significance, representing all the unfinished business of partition and integration.
Patel rose slowly, adjusting his white shawl with the careful dignity that had become his signature. He was seventy-two years old—ancient by the standards of the time, carrying the weight of a thousand negotiations, a thousand compromises that had somehow held India together through partition's horror when everyone predicted it would collapse into anarchy.
"When you won the vote in the Constituent Assembly," Patel said, his tone conversational but weighted with significance, "and Gandhi tried to make Nehru the Prime Minister instead—tried to override the democratic decision because Nehru was his spiritual son, his chosen heir, the man he'd groomed for leadership—I thought there would be blood in the party. Literally. I thought you'd have to fight, or that I'd have to split Congress to support your democratic mandate."
He placed a hand on Anirban's shoulder—a gesture of affection that the Iron Man of India rarely offered, a physical acknowledgment of connection that spoke volumes about his assessment of the younger man.
"But you handled it without insult, without public defiance, without making enemies unnecessarily. You met with Gandhi privately, spent hours with him, somehow made him believe it was his own decision to step back. You gave Nehru the Foreign Ministry with enough dignity and prominence attached that he could accept it without feeling diminished or publicly humiliated. You turned a potential civil war within Congress into a smooth transition that looked inevitable in retrospect."
Patel's grip on Anirban's shoulder tightened slightly.
"That's when I knew, beta—you're one of a kind. You're not just the future of this government. You're the insurance policy of Bharat. Because you understand something that neither Gandhi nor Nehru quite grasp: that in politics, how you win matters almost as much as whether you win. That you can be ruthlessly effective without being needlessly cruel. That power exercised with restraint is more durable than power wielded with abandon."
Anirban's eyes lowered, feeling the weight of the compliment and the burden it implied. He could feel two timelines overlapping in his consciousness—the future he remembered where India had stumbled through decades of missed opportunities, choosing ideological purity over practical achievement, allowing sentiment to override strategy, and this present moment where he had the chance—the terrifying responsibility—to do better.
"If destiny gave me this burden, Patelji," he said quietly, his voice carrying the exhaustion of the sleepless night and something deeper—the weariness of someone who'd lived twice, who carried memories of futures that wouldn't exist,
"then I'll carry it until it breaks me or builds the nation. There's no third option. I won't let India fail because I was too weak or too proud or too attached to ideological purity."
Patel smiled—the proud, weary smile of a man who'd fought too many battles, lost too many friends, made too many compromises, but who was finally, finally seeing a worthy successor emerge from the chaos.
"Then let's make sure it builds, beta. The British left us a broken spine—a bureaucracy designed to extract rather than develop, provinces divided against each other through deliberate policy, communities taught to hate instead of cooperate, institutions built to serve empire rather than nation. You, me, and Subhas—we'll make sure that spine stands tall before this decade ends. Before any of us die, we'll see India walk upright instead of crawling."
He moved toward the door, his movements carrying the careful deliberation of age and exhaustion, then paused with his hand on the handle.
"One more thing." He turned to look back, his expression unreadable. "I know you carry secrets, Anirban. Everyone does—we all have things we don't speak about, decisions we've made that can't be publicly acknowledged. But yours..." He paused, searching for words. "Yours seem heavier than most. Like you're living with knowledge that shouldn't exist yet. Like you've seen things that haven't happened."
Anirban felt his breath catch, his heart suddenly hammering. Had Patel guessed? Could he somehow sense the doubled consciousness, the memories of a future that would never exist, the weight of living in history while remembering how it could have gone wrong?
But the Sardar just smiled gently, without accusation or demand.
"I don't need to know what you know, beta. I don't need to understand where your insights come from—whether they're from brilliance, or instinct, or something stranger that I lack the imagination to conceive. I just need to know that you'll use that knowledge wisely. That whatever drives your decisions—whatever vision guides your hand—you'll wield it for India's benefit, not your own glory or power."
"I will," Anirban said simply, his voice carrying the weight of an oath. "I promise you that, Sardarji. Everything I do, every decision I make, every compromise I accept or fight I pick—it's all for her. For India. I have no other purpose."
"Then that's enough for me." Patel's smile deepened. "That's more than enough."
Outside, the horns of the first full Independence Day parade began to sound—military bands practicing their formations, elephants being guided into position, the pageantry of nationhood being assembled piece by piece for public consumption and international photography.
Patel opened the door, letting in a wash of sound and light from the corridor where aides were already gathering for the day's official business.
"Get some rest, Prime Minister. You'll need it. Today, the world meets India—the flags and ceremonies and speeches that make good photographs and inspiring headlines. But tomorrow, India meets reality. And reality, I've found over many years of disappointment, is far less impressed by poetry than the poets hope."
As the door closed behind him, the soft click seeming to seal away his presence and his wisdom like an artifact being locked in a vault, Anirban stood alone before the map—his reflection merging with the borders of the newborn nation in the glass that covered it.
He was exhausted beyond any measure he'd previously known. His eyes burned with fatigue. His back ached from hours in an uncomfortable chair. His mind felt simultaneously sharp and foggy, operating on reserves he didn't know he possessed.
But beneath the exhaustion, there was something else—a clarity born of purpose, a determination forged from the memories of two lifetimes.
He thought of Saraswati's education proposals, revolutionary in scope but requiring such careful political management to avoid being destroyed by those who preferred tradition to transformation.
He thought of the intelligence briefing scheduled for nine AM about Pakistani movements near Kashmir, about tribal militias being organized for invasion.
He thought of Junagadh, Hyderabad, and a dozen other princely states that were still playing for time, hoping the new Indian government would prove weak enough to negotiate with on equal terms.
He thought of Netaji in East Bengal, attempting the impossible task of preventing partition through sheer force of organization and will, trying to prove that the communal violence everyone assumed was inevitable could actually be prevented.
He thought of Nehru, probably still asleep somewhere after celebrating until dawn, brilliant and charismatic and fundamentally unsuited for the grinding daily work of governance that didn't involve grand visions or inspiring rhetoric.
He thought of Gandhi at Noakhali, fasting and praying, believing that moral example could heal what politics had torn, that the purity of his witness could overcome the structural forces driving communities apart.
He thought of the Constitution yet to be written, the laws yet to be passed, the institutions yet to be built—all the architecture of nationhood that had to be constructed while simultaneously managing crises that threatened to destroy the nation before it could even be properly born.
And he thought—as he always did in quiet moments, as he couldn't help thinking—of the rain-slicked streets of Calcutta in another life, of a manuscript scattered across a dashboard, of truths too expensive to speak, of dying for the crime of documenting how power actually worked.
He whispered, almost to himself, his voice carrying the weight of both lifetimes, the burden of memories that shouldn't exist:
"Sir, if you're listening—Netaji, Patelji, all the ghosts of what might have been and what could still be—I hope you understand. This time, we won't lose her. This time, we'll build something that lasts. Not perfect. Never perfect. But strong enough to survive our mistakes. Strong enough to give our children a chance we never had."
The morning sun caught the tricolor on the map, making the saffron and green seem to glow with their own internal light, as if the colors themselves understood the weight they carried.
Anirban allowed himself one moment—just one—to feel the impossible weight of what he'd undertaken. To acknowledge the audacity of trying to rewrite history with imperfect knowledge and mortal limitations. To recognize that he could fail, that despite all his advantages of foresight and position, the forces arrayed against India's survival were immense.
But then—as he'd done every day since waking in 1915 with memories of a future that shouldn't exist—he pushed the doubt aside.
Because doubt was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Because breaking was not an option.
Because he'd been given this impossible gift—this second chance, this opportunity to correct history's mistakes—and he would not waste it on hesitation or fear.
He straightened his shoulders, gathered his files on Kashmir and Junagadh and the economic integration plans, and prepared for the next meeting.
Because that was the bargain he'd made with fate, or destiny, or whatever force had given him this second chance: he would carry the burden until it broke him or built the nation.
And breaking was not an option.
The thunder that ended one life had become the lightning
illuminating another path.
Now came the work of walking it—one decision, one crisis, one impossible choice at a time—until India was whole, or he was dust, or both.
The parade horns sounded again, closer now, more insistent.
The performance would continue. The world would watch India's pageantry and judge whether this experiment in democracy could survive. Foreign observers would write their analyses, predicting failure or qualified success. Historians would mark August 15, 1947 as a beginning, without understanding how many other beginnings were happening simultaneously in rooms like this one.
But the real work—the work that mattered, the work that would determine whether India thrived or merely survived—would happen in spaces like this one, with maps and files and exhausted people making decisions that would echo through generations.
Anirban took one last look at the map, memorizing its current borders, already planning how to redraw them, already calculating the moves necessary to integrate Junagadh, to strangle Hyderabad's independence dreams, to secure Kashmir before Pakistan's invasion.
Then he unlocked the door and stepped back into history.
The algorithm had been given better input.
Now came the execution.
And this time—this time—he would not fail.
The weight of two lifetimes settled across his shoulders like a cloak made of memory and determination.
He was ready.
India's second day of independence had begun.
And so had the work of ensuring there would be a third, and a fourth, and thousands more.