Bang Bang Bang. Shot after shot after shot. Thousands of martyrs, who never even wanted to be martyrs, are lying lifeless. People are looking for their loved ones. But in the midst of it, you could see a boy, about our age, who was originally serving water, tending to the injured, and carrying the deceased.
You might not have known the boy, but you know the man. He saw what I would be scarred for life seeing. Being born in colonial rule. Freedoms are getting taken like they’re nothing. The two leaders whom you believed in are disappearing. A grumpy old man by the name of Gen. Reginald Dyer took charge. And then, the keystone. You were just going to celebrate Vaisakhi. And in the matter of minutes, more people than you can count, lying in the soil.
If it were literally anybody else, they would have run home and started crying for days. But this so-called boy? He helped the injured. He carried the dead. And he held that bloody soil, and he vowed to avenge those lives. And then, privileges from water to bicycles were stripped. But as said in French literature of the time, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Years later, he became a man. He found the man who approved of it. And in court, rather than his own name, he was Ram Mohammad Singh Azad. Representing all the cultures of the people he fought for. And, as he got sentenced to death, rather than pleading for his life, he said that he was not afraid, but proud to die.
After hearing about him, I was in shock. Awe. Even sadness. But the fact that the freedom he fought for never came in his life, but after, stung the most. But at the same time, we all feel pride in being from the nation where a boy became a man. And that man was Shaheed Udham Singh.