I was standing at a railway station, waiting for a train that had already decided it wouldn’t arrive on time. The sun had fried every ounce of optimism out of the air, and the loudspeaker kept repeating, “The train will arrive at platform number 2, very soon” I stood there, sweating, scrolling through a corporate email that began with “Hope you’re doing well” , the most polite way of saying “You’re not, but please act like you are.”

And then I heard it, two beggars shouting at each other near the platform stairs.

At first, I thought it was about coins or territory. But no. One of them, shirt torn, face glowing with existential purpose, shouted, “I’m telling you, free will exists!”
The other one, barefoot, holding a dented steel bowl, snapped back, “Free will? Ha! Show me one person in India who’s free!”

It was philosophy hour at The Great Indian Junction, next to a puddle that had been a puddle since Independence.

One of them, the thinner one with a glorious beard, declared, “We choose our path!” and dramatically pointed at a passing vada pav wrapper flying in the wind. “See! The wrapper goes where it wants!”

The other one, clearly more grounded, kicked the wrapper and said, “It goes where the wind blows, idiot.”

And just like that, I was watching a live performance of Nietzsche vs Marx, sponsored by poverty and infrastructure negligence.

People around started giggling. A street vendor stopped slicing cucumber to listen. I stood there, suddenly feeling like I was attending a TED Talk in a parallel universe.

The free-will beggar, whom I now mentally named Optimist Rao, raised his voice, “We make choices! That’s why I’m here, because I chose to leave my village!”
The other, whom I dubbed Determinist Das, snorted, You left your village because a politician chose to build a 100-foot statue of a freedom fighter who once visited your district for three minutes in 1947, genius.”

The crowd chuckled. Even the stray dog looked impressed.

Rao wasn’t giving up. “I could start a company tomorrow if I wanted!”
Das laughed so hard his bowl rattled. “Oh really? What will you name it, ‘Beggr’, the app that delivers sympathy in 10 minutes? You think venture capitalists are waiting at Shark Tank with pitch decks looking for someone who can’t afford the tank?”

Rao puffed his chest. “Look around! India is booming! Start-ups, AI, electric cars! If Elon Musk can buy Twitter, I can at least buy a new bowl!”
Das smirked. “Right. And if Adani can buy airports, maybe you can buy your own landing strip for dreams.”

Then Rao, like every Indian uncle after three cups of tea, turned political.
He jabbed his finger at the sky. “At least we have democracy! Free will to vote!”

Das smirked, “Yes, we press a button and they press our necks. Free will ends where the EVM begins.”

“Don’t disrespect democracy!” Rao shot back. “We’re the world’s largest democracy!”
“Exactly,” Das said. “The world’s largest illusion.”

Rao growled, “You’re just negative!”
Das shrugged. “No, I’m realistic. Even our WhatsApp groups have better opposition than Parliament.”

The crowd howled. One auntie yelled, “Arre wah, correct bola!” and handed them a biscuit packet.

Rao switched gears like a panelist on primetime TV. “At least we’re better than Pakistan!”
Das replied, “That’s not a benchmark, that’s a coping mechanism.”

Rao: “We’re the fastest growing economy!”
Das: “So is my blood pressure.”

Rao: “We sent Chandrayaan to the Moon!”
Das: “And yet we can’t find a single train arriving on time”

Rao: “We’re becoming a superpower!”
Das: “Yes, a superpower that bans films faster than it builds hospitals.”

Their argument got me thinking, do we even have free will in this country? Every five years we press a button thinking we’ve changed something, and the next morning it’s the same speeches, same scams, just new fonts on the posters.

We say, “We’re a democracy!” and then choose between people who graduated from the same school of corruption, taught by professors named Money, Muscle, and Misinformation.

Half of us justify murderers, the other half justify memes.

There’s an entire species on social media whose only life purpose is to comment “Godse was misunderstood.” Misunderstood? Bro, Gandhi understood bullets better than you understand logic.

These days, people don’t just question Gandhi, they mock him. They call him overrated, a hypocrite, a British agent, as if the man who walked barefoot for justice somehow owed them better Wi-Fi and cheaper petrol.

We live in a time where shooting Gandhi gets more justification than following him ever did. There’s a whole subculture now shiny profile pictures, saffron filters, and PhDs in historical revisionism, whose main mission is to convince the world that Nathuram Godse was a misunderstood patriot. Misunderstood, really? The man literally wrote why he did it. It’s not Shakespeare, it’s confession.

They call Gandhi “anti-national.” Imagine that. The man who fought without weapons, who turned salt into rebellion, who made morality fashionable, now reduced to a punchline for people whose greatest struggle is typing in uppercase.

They say he divided the country. NO! he held it together while everyone else was busy drawing borders around their egos. Gandhi’s biggest crime, apparently, was believing that decency could be political.

We’ve turned the assassin into a meme and the saint into a marketing liability. “Gandhi doesn’t sell anymore,” they say. Of course not, peace never trends as well as violence. Violence is cinematic, peace is slow. Violence gets retweets, peace gets rolled eyes.

Sometimes I wonder if Gandhi returned today, what would he even do? Probably try to hold another march, but this time the trolls would call it an anti-national protest funded by foreign powers. News anchors would shout, “Who gave him the right to question the government?” and Twitter would trend #GandhiMustExplain.

Maybe he’d just take off his glasses, look around, and say, “You know what? I walked for your freedom, but you ran straight back to your chains.”

The truth is, we didn’t kill Gandhi once. We kill him every day. In every WhatsApp forward, every hate-filled comment, every shrug when injustice happens next door.
Godse fired three bullets. We’re still firing echoes.

My train still hadn’t come. I checked my phone, another email “Gentle reminder on your deliverables.”
Gentle, my foot. Nothing gentle about being chained to Microsoft office while pretending you’re ‘building synergy’.

And then it hit me, maybe I’m no different from the wrapper or the beggar or even the voter. Maybe none of us have free will.

I didn’t choose this job. The job chose me because apparently maturity is when you are settled, and you aren’t settled if you don’t earn money and then spending it on things you never knew existed and also bills does not respect philosophy.

I wake up, I log in, and I work to afford overpriced coffee that I drink to stay awake for more work.

If this is free will, then I want a refund.

Back on the platform, the beggars had stopped arguing.
They were sharing the biscuit packet thrown at them earlier as a token of appreciation, maybe the ultimate expression of socialism.

I smiled. Maybe that’s all there is. We debate big ideas until hunger interrupts us.

The announcement finally came: “Train number 12962 is arriving shortly.”
Everyone stood up like well-trained cattle. I followed.

Maybe that’s the point. We all move when the loudspeaker tells us to.
We call it choice because it makes the waiting easier.

As the train pulled in, the thinner beggar looked at me and said, “Bhaiya, chhutta milega?” I handed him a coin. He grinned and said, “Dekha? Free will!” And I laughed. Because maybe, for a second, it was.