By Anuj Dhar

Thirteen people were present when Bhagwanji of Faizabad was cremated at Guptar Ghat on the banks of River Saryu (Uttar Pradesh) on September 18, 1985. When the pyre was lit, one of them broke down and said, "…there should have been 13 lakh people here!"

Sixteen years later, a rock that marks the spot scream for attention from the middle of a wild vegetation. On its face someone has painted in an unsteady hand, 'gumnami sant' or a man with a lost name - the words read like a disclaimer on someone requesting anonymity, as if saying, "Sorry, he did not wish to be known".

A farmer working in the field nearby, however, is quick to give back the man his name. "That is Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose", he says. The farmer, like many people in Faizabad, needs no convincing on the man cremated here.

Faizabad had known Bhagwanji since his days as a lodger at Rambhawan in 1983. His landlord of two years, Gurubasant Singh, who retired as a transport officer, remembers the day when Dr RP Mishra (Bhagawanji's follower since 1975) walked in and booked the two room annexe of the house. The doctor said the rooms were for his grandfather and his caretakers, a woman called Sarswati Devi and her son Rajkumar Misra. "He is a religious man. He stays in his room and worships all the time. He never appears before anyone," the doctor told him.

Apparently, Bhagwanji's reputation had not preceded him to Faizabad. Earlier, the fear of controversy and poverty had driven him from Neemsar to Basti and then on to Ayodhya. He did not even have the money to pay for his rent. (A neighbour in Ayodhya recalls the days when Bhagwanji hurt himself and lay unattended withering in pain in a run-down house with no electricity and a swarm of mosquitoes to keep him company through the summer nights.)

Bhagwanji was also very secretive in his ways... apparently, Rambhawan like all other places where he stayed, had been carefully chosen to preserve the secrecy he wanted. His rooms at Rambhawan were to the back of the main house and could be reached through a narrow lane next to the main pathway. Another passage led from the rooms through the backyard and towards the cantonment. When visitors came calling (people say military, civil and police officials used to visit him for long hours during the night), they could walk in without being noticed.

Though Singh was the host for two years, he never met Bhagwanji face-to-face. "I heard him speak ...His voice was heavy and crisp, like that of a military general. It reminded me of the actor, Sohrab Modi…" Singh says. "But he was always behind a curtain."

Of course, to Singh and many others, the veil of secrecy was too thick, and not until Bhagwanji's death was it lifted. Today, as the truth emerges, Singh prepares for the moment his house is declared a national monument.

By the time Bhagwanji moved to Faizabad, he was 86 years old and was in need of regular medical attention. Dr T Banerjee, his son Dr Priyabrat Banerjee, besides Dr Mishra, were always there for him.

Dr Priyabrat Banerjee who deposed before the Mukherjee Commission recalls the day in 1975 when Saraswati Devi came to their clinic and asked his father to accompany her to "attend to the baba".

"My father was a changed man when he returned after the meeting… he was perplexed and excited!" Both Banerjee senior and his wife Pushpa had seen Netaji in the 1930s… there was no mistaking their man.

After his father died in 1983, Dr Priyabrat Banerjee became the attendant doctor. He recalls his first meeting with the Bhagwanji: "My heart throbbed like a pump when I saw him. He was fair, almost bald and had a long beard. There was something in his gaze… I could not even look into his eyes."

Not everyone was, however, lucky to see his face. Ramji Pandey, who used to massage him, remembers how Bhagwanji used to cover his face with a monkey cap. Cuts on the Bhagwanji's abdomen, however, did not escape the masseur's notice.

Another man recalls how Bhagwanji described to his wife a visit to Stuttgart in Germany. It, of course, left the man wondering how a penniless hermit, who by the look of it had not even strayed beyond Uttar Pradesh, could talk so knowledgeably about a city in a foreign country.

Many such stories on Bhagwanji do round in Faizabad today. In fact, after his death in 1985, the baba's stories were splashed on the first pages of many local newspapers. The news even travelled to Parliament, although soon after - and quite strangely - the stories got spiked.

Indeed, many questions were asked after his death, and the one big question centered on the manner in which he was cremated. In fact, after his death on September 16, people were physically prevented from entering the house by his followers. Even Gurubasant was stopped at the door.

The body was kept in the house for two days after which his confidants draped his body in a tricolour and took his body in a van to Guptar Ghat. There, on a piece of public land, his body was put to the flames.

People who attended the cremation say it drizzled when the pyre was lit.