For Pathy Aiyar, the Delhi International Arts Festival at National School of Drama will be like home coming. Twenty years ago he was the only south Indian who had been shortlisted twice to study at the premier institute. But destiny willed otherwise and he did not make it. “It is a dream come true for me to have been invited to perform at NSD, even if it is 20 years later,” says the visibly excited Aiyar.

The artist has been invited with his critically acclaimed Of God and Country, a one-man play based on Bhagat Singh’s essay Why I am an atheist?.

Aimed at explaining freedom to a generation that been defined by concept, the play touches upon a most controversial subject of atheism. “Many do not know that Bhagat Singh was an atheist. Infact a lot of people I have interacted with have found it difficult to deal with this aspect of his personality,” says Pathy who has often found it difficult to find sponsors for the play for this very reason. But if one considers the act in its entirety, it is about Bhagat Singh’s greatest conquest — his freedom from the shackles of belief, that remained unperturbed even at the face of death. “When I first read the essay 10 years ago, it put a lot of things in perspective for me — professionally and  personally,” says Pathy. Though he isn’t an atheist himself, the clarity of thought that the 23-year-old Bhagat Singh presented was rivetting. Soon he had established names like Deepak Joshi, Ashish Sen and Paresh Kumar collaborating with him to turn it into a play. The idea was to bring the story to an intimate audience and watch them react to it.

But with a global theme like freedom being the essence of the play, the international audience soon came knocking at his door. ‘Of God and Country’ is also being performed at the prestigious Bangkok Theatre Network Festival that begins next week. “I am really looking forward to the experience because this is the first time the play is going international and it will be interesting to interact with an audience that are by and large ignorant about Bhagat Singh,” according to the packed and ready-to-go Pathy.

A very wise soul once said ‘Freedom isn’t free, it is priceless’. It only seems befitting that the stories of men and women who fought for it, are told more often.