Aug 15th, independence day

In the early hours of January 17 1941, one of the founders of Indian National Army and one of the most enigmatic leaders of freedom struggle, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose conned the British intelligence and escaped from his house in Kolkata to wage a war on the Raj.

It was from the typically colonial 38/2, Elgin Road house in south Kolkata that Netaji spent nearly 25 years of his life. It was here that Bose, a rebellious college student, became a leader of the Indian National Congress and rolled out one of the greatest adventures of India's freedom struggle from its driveway.

Deep in the walls of this building, there was once a dream. A dream that was radically different from Gandhi's plans of peaceful protest and it was through the verandah of the house, while the city slept on a cold moonlit night in January 1941, that Bose tiptoed out of his bedroom and fled to Afghanistan and Europe, which eventually resulted in the birth of the Azad Hind Fauj.

Bose tricked the British intelligence and slipped out in this 1937 Wanderer, made in Germany. He had for chauffeur nephew Sisir, who was then only 20 years old.


That daredevil act, which started in this driveway, is still fondly recounted by the successors of the young chauffeur.

"Dr Bose felt that he was fortunate in playing a very small role in a very big historical event. Because the day Subhas Chandra Bose left this house, historians now say that this was the beginning of the Azad Hind movement.

Subhas Chandra Bose in his graduation to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - that was the first step," Wife of Sisir Kumar Bose, Krishna Bose, says.

The bedroom from where Netaji plotted the escape has been preserved the way it was 55 years ago.

After all, it was here that the leader gave concrete shape to his political theory of armed struggle after parting ways with the Congress.

"He wanted to substitute the loyalty of Indian soldiers to the British King emperor with a new loyalty to India. And that he would only be able to achieve if he had access to Indian prisoners of war being held by the enemies of Britain in the Second World War, Historian Sugata Bose says.

A few months before Independence, Netaji's elder brother Sarat Bose dedicated this building to the country.

It now houses a museum and a research centre.

There are no sounds of urgent footfalls resonating in the corridors anymore.

Yet, there seems to be something that still lives on in every brick of this building, perhaps waiting to tell the untold tales of those turbulent times, which never reached the history textbooks.

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Education

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