Mr. O is legally dead and everybody loves him.
Mr. O has seen life, and also as sadhus like him say, a little bit beyond it as well. Life, as Mr. O often says sitting cross legged over a stage decked with flowers petals – could be brutal, beatific, and beefing – the kinkiest creature he has ever met.
He does still remember the kid who used to run around in the snow. He had small hands, big eyes, and blond hair. He was a native Indian and he was white. A destined revolutionary, that boy once used to be a thief and then grew up to give discourses on life, afterlife, and everything in between.
He had had had many names. His original name, amongst the garbs as the rumors had it, was Christopher Omkar – Mr. O – as the gardener referred to him while telling his story at one of Mr. O’s meditation camps in Haridwar.
[Faizabad: January, 1984]
As he was heading to meet an anonymous Baba, the small town of Faizabad felt remarkably cold that day, yet not remotely as bitter cold as Delhi. Mr. O had imagined that it would be so, at least warmer than Delhi and he was not mistaken. The last time he was here in this part of the world, he was about eight years old. He has come back now to meet someone who nobody knew to be back.
No longer on the run, Mr. O today has a wife and a daughter and two grandsons, twins which are. He also has a following of people which goes beyond hundreds of thousands. But Mr. O still was getting a bit anxious as he drove closer to his destination. This was a special occasion after all.
‘I hope you are not lost.’ said the gardener sitting at the back seat.
‘I hope so too.’ Mr. O laughed quickly looking at the backseat in the rearview mirror.
The enlightened one was going to meet another enlightened one. Mr. O felt a sense of spiritual attainment while driving through those chilly and nostalgic roads occupied mostly by mud holes and cows. But he had already claimed of such attainment before.
‘I’ll go to the riverbank for a walk.’ said the gardener before disappearing.
Mr. O was not much worried about getting scratches on his new car. Maya has recently gifted it to him – an old Mercedes, the saloon model. The girl knew after all, that her father liked all things vintage. Mr. O turned the car inside the bus stand.
He had been driving alone all the way from Delhi. His wife was waiting at the bus stand, having arrived a few days back for a wedding.
The kids playing cricket at the bus stand ran and jumped around his car. The car was a big deal for many people, and many people called him Sahib because of this motor car. People called him a Sahib even if Mr. O had nothing to do with the government, and Mr. O never liked it, to be called a Sahib.
He hated the word as much as did the man he was now going to meet, if not more. That man too, as the rumors had it, had had had many names – from Orlando Mazzotta to Maulawi Ziauddin – from General Shiva to Mahakal – the civil servant who defied the emperor and the empire, becoming a military general and then vanishing without leaving a trace as the world’s best spies tired themselves on his trail.
‘I think Babaji will be happy to see you today.’ said his wife Vandana. Mr. O is travelling without a driver after a long time. He asked her if she was carrying those cigars.
‘Yes.’ She replied pulling out a case of thick imported cigars out of her purse.
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[Delhi: December, 1944]
Doctor Sahib was a spymaster. It was a facet of the world war and there were far too many stakeholders. There was no option of being a leaderless force. Doctor Sahib had taken great care in inspecting Mr. O thoroughly.
An Asiatic consciousness he said must emerge to counterbalance the west. Mr. O could not believe at first when he was told that Netaji had been parachuting spies into India. Even that there were spy schools setup in Rangoon, churning out trained spies on quarterly basis. Mr. O made it very clear to Doctor Sahib that he did not intend to go back to any school of any kind.
‘But if you are caught here in Delhi, you will not be left alive.’ Doctor Sahib told Mr. O, that the police was just waiting to pounce.
Mr. O joined the INA in January 1945.
‘I John Samuel, a member of the Azad Hind Sangh, do hereby solemnly promise in the name of God and take this holy oath that I will be absolutely loyal and faithful to the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, and shall always be prepared for any sacrifice for the cause of freedom of our motherland, under the leadership of Subhash Chandra Bose.’ He read out loudly from a small blue card.
He had gone to Calcutta and joined a group of others who were leaving for Dhaka. No one said anything to Mr. O, murmuring to each other once they heard his voice that somebody there was probably going to be a spy.
The final destination was Rangoon. The recruitment for INA was in full swing. Netaji was a rage amongst his soldiers, a true commander whose mere presence commanded the respect of people.
Mr. O had put his life in danger before.
But fighting as part of INA was not the same. And for the first time in his life, Mr. O was part of what he would call an organization. He liked to believe and said often to his fellow soldiers that he had finally taken a side – his blood for his freedom.
For a long time, Mr. O was a soldier and also a cook. To prepare food for such a large number of people, he realized was a war in itself. Food like rice came from the Japanese side while the fishes were arranged by the Provisional Government of Azad Hind. Mr. O worked in the kitchen along with an old man named Sarvanan and another fellow from Peshawar who everyone referred to as Bulla.
They were told very specifically that the men wouldn’t be able to afford a bad stomach in the middle of a war. And that really made the everyday life easy for Mr. O, so to speak – carrots, bullets, and a mug of milk a day with a little rice was the only order for a long time as they all soon went better and better at navigating and living in the jungle, running zigzag through the enemies and the snakes alike.
They ran with bullets hurtling towards them and yet many times those bullets did not hit anyone. And yet many times, while sitting peacefully behind a bush, a bullet would make its way through a man’s body. It is in the war zone that Mr. O understood that the trouble with death was the process of dying. Those men were considered lucky who died quickly and without pain, as many bled and bled in pain and anguish while their brothers in arms rushed to them the injections of morphine and life amid the chaos of battle.
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