on International Youth Day
They call me the Kaalikotri-Kokila, the Cuckoo of the Black Prison, the songbird of iron corridors. I have been here a long time—so long, the dust has changed its smell, and the echoes of chains have mellowed into a rhythm I hum when I’m bored. I have sung to men whose hearts beat so loud the walls could hear, and to boys who walked to the gallows as if going to school. And now, I watch over a generation that carries its battles inside glowing rectangles.
It was the Agni-yug then—the Age of Fire. Not the soft, symbolic fire your motivational speakers wave at corporate retreats, but real fire—hot, dangerous, and occasionally packed into tiffin carriers. Bengal was restless. The polite petitions of earlier years smelled like wilted flowers, and the young were impatient. They wanted change now, not when the British were ready to grant it in tidy instalments.
And then came Khudiram.
A boy from Tamluk, orphaned at six, sold to his sister in a ritual involving khud—broken rice—to trick death into staying away. Life, it seems, has a sense of humour, for death was the one thing he would not avoid. At fifteen, he was handing out seditious leaflets with the seriousness of a man delivering medicine. At sixteen, he was planting bombs. At seventeen, he and Prafulla Chaki set out to kill Douglas Kingsford, the British magistrate whose verdicts had all the mercy of a drought. The bomb missed its intended target, killing two English women instead. Prafulla shot himself before capture. Khudiram ran twenty-five miles barefoot before they caught him.
At eighteen—while today’s youth are negotiating gap years, perfecting their influencer angles, or launching “side hustles”—Khudiram walked to the gallows barefoot, smiling, a Bhagavad Gita in his hands. The guards swore they had never seen anyone so calm. I watched him pass, his shadow brushing mine. “Didi,” he whispered to the wall, “don’t let them forget.”
I’ve tried. Oh, I’ve tried. But when I peek into your world now, I find him in grainy photographs on social media, wedged between ads for weekend getaways and videos about cats in sunglasses. You ‘like’ him once a year, on his anniversary, and then you move on to the next trending topic.
Today is the International Day of Youth. You are celebrating, I see. Pretty pastel slogans, webinars with frozen video feeds, earnest hashtags in neat fonts. You say you are “empowered.” The word floats well on Instagram, though it’s never quite clear who exactly is doing the empowering.
I keep a mental ledger. Then: they hid printing presses under floorboards, knowing a single pamphlet could be a death sentence. Now: you hide your dissent in disappearing Instagram stories so your employer won’t see. Then: they risked their lives. Now: you risk getting ‘cancelled’ online. Then: they burnt their youth like camphor for a cause. Now: you burn your phone batteries livestreaming your outrage while your coffee arrives via an underpaid delivery rider. Their debates were about whether to take up arms or follow non-violence. Yours? Whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
I said as much to Mohan the other day—you know him as M.K. Gandhi. We met in the afterworld, under a tamarind tree that insists on flowering all year. He was sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, attempting serenity.
“Mohan,” I said, “you’re not allowed to rest in peace.”
He opened one eye, irritated. “And why is that, Kokila?”
“Because they wheel you out for everything. Budget speeches, khadi adverts, school debates, even toothpaste commercials that want to look ethical. You’re busier dead than you were alive.”
He gave a small, saintly smile. “And Khudiram?”
“Khudiram isn’t allowed to live in dignity—even in death. His story is recited like exam notes, stripped of fire. Your name sells ideals; his sells commemorative stamps. They call you ‘Father of the Nation’; he is a footnote in the chapter titled ‘Revolutionaries, Miscellaneous.’”
“That is… regrettable,” he said carefully. “But, Kokila, his was the violent path. Non-violence and bombs—”
“—don’t belong in the same chapter? Yes, I’ve heard that line before,” I cut in. “That’s the problem. You turned history into a tasting menu. Pick Gandhi for the moral palate, skip Khudiram for the bitter aftertaste. But both of you were driven by the same hunger, Mohan. One served it on a spinning wheel, the other in gunpowder.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “You make it sound as if the youth should revive his methods.”
“I make it sound,” I said, “as if the youth should revive his courage.”
Your enemies are different now. No magistrates in black coats; your oppressors wear corporate blazers and smile from political posters. They won’t exile you to the Andamans—they’ll drown you in notifications until you forget what you were angry about. But the disease is the same: power without accountability, exploitation without shame. And the cure is still courage, the kind that sweats in the street, not the kind that uploads in HD.
If you must take something from Khudiram, take his discipline. The Agni-yug wasn’t a random outburst—it was a web of minds, bodies, and plans stitched together in dangerous secrecy. Every leaflet, every meeting, every bomb was part of a pattern. Your “movements” are often fireworks—bright, loud, and gone before the smoke clears. His was a furnace—steady, relentless, too hot to touch.
I wish, on this International Day of Youth, that you taste the discomfort of purpose. That you step out from the warm bath of online agreement into the cold air where change takes time and enemies don’t block you—they face you. That you learn to hold both Gandhi and Khudiram in your mind, not as rivals, but as two sparks from the same fire.
I can still hear Khudiram’s steps down the Muzaffarpur corridor. I can still hear your fingers tapping on your glass screens. Between you lies a chasm, but chasms can be bridged. Just remember, when you next post #YouthDay with a carefully chosen font and filter, that I am perched above you, a ghostly bird with iron dust on my feathers, whispering into your feed:
“What will you risk for what you believe?”
And remember—once, not so long ago, the young did not wait for perfect timing or permission. They simply lit the match.
References
- Bose, Manoshi. The Agni-Yug: Revolutionaries in Bengal, 1902–1910.
- “Khudiram Bose.” National Archives of India.
- Ghosh, Barindra Kumar. The Story of My Life.
- Majumdar, Bimanbehari. History of the Freedom Movement in India: Vol. 2.
- International Youth Day, United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/observances/youth-day
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