Jajabara in the US of A Part VII: Harlem Hugged Me Tight

Everyone said — leave the car in Philadelphia, take the train.

I followed the advice, which for someone who had spent the better part of this trip ignoring plans and inventing alternatives, felt like a small act of maturity. The Jetta was returned. I boarded the train. New York arrived the way New York always does — suddenly, loudly, without preamble, as if it had been there all along and you were the one who had taken too long.

I had been here before. In 2013, I had stayed with a friend in Brooklyn — the New York of neighbourhoods and bridges and a slightly more human scale. This time I was on my own, and I had made a decision before I arrived. I was going to stay in Harlem.

The reasons were known and unknown to me, even as I made the choice. Maybe it was the name and its ring — Harlem, a word that carries its own music. Maybe it was the stories, the history, the Harlem Renaissance and everything it had meant for Black art and culture and identity in America. Maybe it was simply that after days of rust belt loneliness and West Virginia woods and Philadelphia's revolutionary ghosts, I wanted to be somewhere that felt unguarded. Somewhere with no pretence.

Harlem delivered. And then some.

---

It hugged me from day one.

I stepped out for lunch and found Sylvia's — the famous soul food restaurant on Lenox Avenue that has been feeding Harlem since 1962. The food was the kind that makes you understand immediately why it is called soul food — generous, warm, deeply seasoned, the culinary equivalent of a tight embrace. I ate well. I felt welcomed by the meal itself.

The days that followed had their own rhythm. Mornings on 125th Street, walking up and down the spine of the neighbourhood, ducking into small museums and bookshops that rewarded the unhurried browser. The Apollo Theatre — that legendary stage where Ella Fitzgerald won her first amateur night, where James Brown recorded a live album, where Harlem's cultural heartbeat has been measured for nearly a century. I stood outside it for a while, then went in, then stood some more.

In the small parks, people sat and smoked and danced with the particular joy of people who have decided that joy is not something to be postponed. No occasion required. No audience needed. An afternoon, a park bench, some music and some weed, and the simple business of being alive in a neighbourhood that knows how to live. I watched, I absorbed, I was grateful to be allowed to witness it.

Harlem Nights — the club — gave me an evening of exactly what the name promises. The neighbourhood, I discovered, does not perform its warmth. It simply has it, the way some people do, effortlessly and without thinking about it.

---

I had wanted, badly, to watch Hamilton on Broadway.

Alexander Hamilton — the immigrant who became the first Secretary of the Treasury, the man whose portrait I had seen on the ten dollar bill, whose story had been turned into a musical that the whole world seemed to have seen except me. Hamilton Grange, his home in Harlem, was one of my stops — the modest house where the great man had lived, tucked improbably into the neighbourhood that now carries his story in ways he could not have imagined. I visited. I paid my respects.

But Hamilton the musical was sold out. Completely, finally, unapologetically sold out.

I settled for Chicago at Broadway instead, which turned out to be no settling at all. The show was sensuous — a pure delight for the senses, jazz and style and showmanship woven together into something that made you understand why Broadway is Broadway. I left the theatre buzzing in the way that only live performance, done at its absolute best, can produce.

Dinner one evening was at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company at Times Square — touristy, cheerful, entirely unapologetic about being both, the shrimp excellent and the Times Square circus doing its thing outside the windows. I ate and watched the world perform itself.

Central Park I visited several times, each time finding a different version of it — the early morning park, the afternoon park, the park at that hour when the light goes golden and everyone seems to slow down slightly, as if by agreement.

I went up to Brooklyn — back to the borough that had housed me in 2013, familiar and changed at once, the way places you have known always are.

---

And then, towards the end of the week, I went looking for the Ashram.

The Self Realisation Fellowship in New York — the ashram of my guru, a quiet address in the middle of one of the loudest cities on earth. I had been moving for weeks. Airports and highways and mountain roads and ghost tours and soul food and Broadway and Harlem parks. I had covered ground — physical, emotional, spiritual — in quantities I had not fully accounted for. I needed, before the journey ended, to find my centre.

I found it there. A few moments of meditation, of genuine silence, of stillness that the city outside seemed to agree not to disturb. The kind of quiet that you can only fully appreciate after a great deal of noise. I sat. I breathed. I let the journey settle into me rather than chasing after the next thing.

It was, in its way, the most important stop of the entire trip.

---

The departure was quiet. A morning flight, the city still finding its feet as I made my way to the airport. No fanfare, no ceremony. The jajabara does not end with a bang — it simply becomes the past, which is where all good journeys eventually live.

Home and family were waiting.

That is both the simplest and the most complete thing I can say about why the road, however wonderful, is always something you leave. The wandering is real, the freedom is real, the loneliness and the beauty and the toothless signposts and the farmers and the Harlem parks and the Chesapeake Bay from above — all of it real, all of it worth every mile.

And yet.

S was waiting. The life I had left temporarily was waiting. India, with its noise and its chaos and its petrol station attendants who fill your tank and clean your windshield and ask — cash, card or UPI — was waiting.

I had driven from Normal, Illinois to Virginia on roads that run the heart of America. I had been lost in West Virginia woods and found by a farmer. I had eaten soul food in Harlem and watched Chicago on Broadway and sat in silence in an ashram and stood on a wooden deck over still water and rolled a cigarette and been, for a few weeks, entirely and completely free.

The road gives you that. And then it gives you back.

I was ready to go home. 

Tamas: Where the Stage Becomes a Mirror

A personal essay on the NSD Repertory Company's production at the Summer Theatre Festival

The opening scene told me everything I needed to know. Before a single word was spoken, the set announced itself — grand, layered, a visual feast of the kind that the National School of Drama Repertory Company has made its unmistakable hallmark. And then the music began. Not from some invisible corner of the wings, but loud and emotive singing from the actors themselves, on stage — music so carefully chosen and so organically woven into the fabric of the narrative that it ceased to be accompaniment and became the play's very bloodstream.

I had been wanting to encounter Tamas for a long time. Bhisham Sahni's novel had sat on the edges of my reading life, always deferred; the celebrated television series with Om Puri had similarly eluded me. So when the NSD Repertory Company staged Vibhajan Vibhishika — Tamas as part of their Summer Theatre Festival, it felt less like watching a play and more like finally keeping a long-overdue appointment with a part of our history.

Powerful acting and strong casting are, with the NSD, almost a given. These are professionals shaped by years of rigorous training and then honed further by the demands of a performing repertory company. But where this production scaled genuinely newer heights was in its theatrical imagination — in its daring choices of form and staging. There is a scene where three actors, dressed identically, impersonating the same person, emerge simultaneously from different directions, converging on one of the protagonists. The effect is not merely visual — it is psychological, almost hallucinatory. Fear, worry, mental unraveling: the protagonist conveyed all of these at once, and the staging made you feel each one separately. Brilliant.

Then there were the mob scenes. The easy choice would have been noise — shouting, chaos, the full volume of human violence. Instead, the directors chose silence. The cries and clashes of rioting crowds were rendered through violent, contorted movements of hands and faces — a choreography of horror without sound. Sometimes the noise began and then was drained away into an unbearable quiet. The choice was deliberate, and it was devastating.

The use of props was, as one would expect, precisely calibrated: swords when the moment called for them, guns when a shot had to be fired, sticks to make a point. Nothing excessive, nothing absent.

I come to Partition-themed work with a particular personal weight. One of the first plays I performed in Delhi — at the India Habitat Centre — was Kharashein, written by Gulzar. That encounter shook me. The violence and brutality with which human beings can turn upon one another in the grip of a communal frenzy — the fire, the blood, the gore — seemed almost unthinkable. It marked me.

But Tamas does something more unsettling than depicting violence. It exposes the architecture behind it. It shows, with unflinching clarity, that the riots are rarely as spontaneous as they appear — that there are engineers, profiteers, and political orchestrators working in the shadows. A quiet bedtime conversation between the British Deputy Commissioner and his wife. A petty squabble between political leaders. A local strongman pulling strings from a distance, for purposes that have nothing to do with God, religion or culture. The audience is made to see this slowly, through accumulation — a hint here, a gesture there — and the realisation creeps up on you like cold water.

And the people who actually die, who lose their homes and families and everything they have — they believe they are fighting a righteous battle. They feel they are acting on God's will, or their community's honour, or their own wounded pride. They have no idea they are pawns. They have no agency. That is the most unbearable thing Tamasforces you to sit with.

Tamas — darkness — is the right word. But Sahni's darkness, as rendered on this stage, comes in two registers. First it erupts: violent, volcanic, like molten lava pouring out of the crater of a riot. And then, when the lava cools, you see what remains — not clean ash, but something far worse: the dark, stagnant waste water that surrounds us always, filled with the organic and inorganic debris of our own nature, our own capacity for complicity and silence.

Go. If the NSD Repertory Company's Summer Theatre Festival is still running, go. If it is not, watch for the next one. These are plays that do not merely entertain — they insist, quietly and powerfully, that you look at yourself

Jajabara in the US of A (Part III: The Loneliest Road - the Dust and the Rust)

The rain and thunderstorm from the previous evening had not entirely made up its mind.

I watched the news before sleep took me — equal parts weather forecast and optimism, washed down with some food I had carried from the café in St. Louis. The risk was not rhetorical. Tornadoes in middle America are not metaphors. They are real, they are sudden, and the loneliest road in America would be a particularly poor place to meet one. I filed this thought under "things to worry about tomorrow" and let the tiredness of the day — the concentration, the rain, the accidental state-crossing — pull me under.

Morning proved the optimism correct.

---

I looked out of the window and the sky was clear. But it was not the weather that held me. It was the water.

Right behind the motel room at Super 8 (run by Indians), quiet and unhurried, ran a small stream that opened into what was unmistakably a private lake. Ducks — white, unhurried, indifferent to me — dotted its edges. I stood there after breakfast for a while, watching them, thinking about the lake.

In India, a body of water like this would have seventeen competing claims on it — the government, the village panchayat, the farmer next door, the man who has been washing his buffalo in it for forty years. Here, someone had simply put a fence around it and called it theirs. America has been blessed with more natural resources than almost any nation on earth. It has also, I thought, been blessed with a remarkable appetite to capture, own and label them. The ducks had no opinion on the matter.

I took the car out for a slow drive through Vincennes before leaving. I hovered around the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park — that grand rotunda built to honour the Revolutionary War general who wrestled the Northwest Territory from the British. It sat there magnificently, a little too large for its surroundings, the way American monuments often do. I was too restless to go inside. This is something I was beginning to understand about myself on a road trip — the road takes priority. Everything else gets demoted. Museums, historical sites, the carefully curated versions of places — all secondary. The place itself, lived in and moving, is what the road offers.

---

Lagootee arrived next. A small, middle-of-nowhere town that the highway had not forgotten but the world largely had. Someone had mentioned it was close to Amish country and I had been quietly hoping — the Amish, that extraordinary community that has chosen a different bargain with modernity, were something I had only seen on television. I wanted to see a horse-drawn buggy. I wanted to see the hats.

Instead, I walked into a diner and found something equally worth seeing — a full house of sixty-plus year olds, four or five waitresses also of similar age at ease with each other like a family, and a level of conversation and banter that needed no translation. These women knew every customer by name, knew their orders before they sat down, knew which one needed more coffee and which one needed more sympathy. The omelette was excellent. The coffee was strong. The Amish were elsewhere, and I did not miss them.

Outside Lagootee, I had my first solo encounter with an American gas station.

In India, pulling into a petrol station is a full-service production. Someone waves you in, someone else asks — cash, card or UPI — a third person handles the nozzle, and if you are lucky, someone offers to wipe your windshield. You sit in your car like a person of leisure while the world organises itself around your fuel tank.

Here — a machine, a card slot, a series of prompts, and the distinct impression that the machine was mildly impatient with me. I recalled every instruction Soumya provided me. I followed every step. I filled the tank. No help, no guidance, no human involvement whatsoever. A small and private victory, celebrated alone in a car park outside Lagootee, Indiana.

---

The drive east from here was where the road began to tell a different story.

The Rust Belt. A phrase that sounds almost romantic until you drive through it. Town after town that had once hummed with industry and population, now wearing a hollowed-out look — discoloured houses, broken fences, overgrown lawns, shops shuttered so long the signs had faded. These were not abandoned places. People lived here, families persisted, curtains moved in windows. But the prosperity that had once organised these towns around it had quietly packed up and left, and what remained was the structure without the pulse.

I stopped for coffee in one of these towns. Walked in. The few people inside looked up with the particular attention reserved for something genuinely unexpected. I was, in that room, an alien. Not unwelcome — just entirely improbable. I drank my coffee. We exchanged nods. I left.

I crossed from Indiana into Kentucky briefly — the road dipping into a third state almost as an aside — and then into Ohio, the land flattening and widening with each mile.

---

I crossed briefly through Kentucky — the road dipping south almost as a casual aside — and then into Ohio before the day finally drew me into Chillicothe.

Chillicothe is one of those American towns that carries more history than its current size suggests — Ohio's first state capital, ancient Hopewell culture earthworks buried in its surroundings. I knew none of this then. What I found was a pub dedicated to Highway 50, warm inside, unhurried, with good beer and decent food and the kind of atmosphere that a long day of driving makes feel like paradise.

I had a couple of beers. I had food. I was content in the specific way that only honest tiredness and honest hunger, both met at once, can produce. Yet again, talking about regrets, I should have bought some more highway 50 merchandise as memorabilia.  

The route maps and details in the planned kept referring to mounds and I was keen to explore them - but I realised you need to know about something for you to be excited about it. What it is? What it was? What it could be? I missed the mounds despite their highlighted importance. 

I did not want to miss a good night’s sleep. The motel (again run by an Indian family) that night was however a different matter.

Practically empty. Situated beside a freeway that did not sleep, massive trucks announcing themselves through the thin walls at regular intervals. Around it, the kind of vast empty American space that looks fine in daylight and deeply unsettling at night — a car park the size of a small town, pools of orange light, nothing moving except perhaps some shadows.

I was the only guest, as far as I could tell. But I had company, the cleaner of the room had left a small hand written note for the guest ! The gesture brought the human connection to a rather inhuman situation. I wrote something back and left a tip. 

I locked the door. I did not investigate further. The road, I reminded myself, was waiting in the morning.

It always was.

Jajabara in the US of A (Part IV: Mountain Mama, a Signpost and the Road Home)

I was out of Chillicothe before the town had properly woken up.

The ritual was the same as Soumya's driveway — unpack little the night before, pack in the morning with deliberate care, restore a sense of order before surrendering to the beautiful disorder of the road. There is something about this routine that I was beginning to trust. The packing was the last thing I controlled. After that, the road decided.

And today, the road was taking me to West Virginia.

I had heard West Virginia in songs before I had ever looked at it on a map. Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong — West Virginia, mountain mama. 

I had been fascinated by mountains my whole life and I could see them assembling on the horizon as I drove out of Ohio through Athens and then Parkersburg, the land gathering itself upward, the sky getting closer. It was one of the finest days of driving I have ever had. The road curved and the mountains curved with it, the trees pressing in on both sides, the occasional car ahead disappearing around a bend like a thought you almost had.

Soumya's voice was in my ear, as it had been since Normal — follow the speed limit signs and you will navigate well. I followed. I navigated. I was happy.

Then I crossed the West Virginia river, saw the signboard welcoming me to the Mountain State, and the phone signal quietly disappeared.

---

It did not happen all at once. First patchy, then unreliable, then gone. The GPS screen stared at me blankly. I was in proper woods now — thin at first, then thick, the big trees closing over the road like a roof. I was enjoying it. Eyes on the road, carefully reading each curve, the scenic beauty arriving from all directions — ahead, both sides, the rear view mirror framing what I was leaving behind like a painting I would never own.

Then the road ended.

A closure. Unmarked on any map I had, unannounced by any signal I could receive. I sat there for a moment and took stock — no GPS, no signal, no data, no way to call anyone, printed maps that showed roads but not this particular problem. Just instinct and road signs and whatever came next.

I turned left.

Not knowing where it would take me. Whether it would fold back onto the road I had been on or carry me somewhere else entirely. This is the thing about decisions — you never fully know. There are parallel lives waiting at every fork, diverging infinitely, never intersecting. Richard Bach explored this in One and in other books — the idea that every choice creates a version of you that goes the other way. Robert Frost, of course, said it first and said it better. Two roads in a wood. I took the one that turned left and told myself it would make all the difference.

The big trees blocked the sunlight. The road narrowed. And then I found it — a small water body, still and dark, with a wooden deck extending over it. I parked. I walked to the edge of the deck. Across the water, an abandoned house looked back at me, windows empty, roof patient. I rolled a cigarette and stood there.

Nothing crossed the road. Nothing hurried me. No sound that needed answering, no phone that could ring. I was completely with myself, in a way that a city, a conference, a full life of obligations rarely permits. This moment was entirely mine. I stayed until I was ready to leave, which is the only correct amount of time to stay anywhere.

---

Then I drove for another hour and the solitude began to shift from beautiful to unsettling.

Where were the other cars? No one was overtaking me, no one was coming the other way. The road kept offering itself ahead and I kept accepting it, but with decreasing confidence. Whom would I ask, if I needed to ask? There was no one to ask.

And then the signpost appeared.

It said, verbatim, in letters that left no room for interpretation — YOUR GPS IS WRONG. PLEASE GO BACK.

I was shell-shocked. Every Hollywood film I had ever watched in which a group of travellers ventures into the American wilderness and meets some unspeakable country legend came flooding back simultaneously. I sat with this information for a moment, in a car, on a road that had just been told to go back, in the middle of West Virginia, with no signal and no fuel to spare.

Then someone arrived.

A farmer. Friendly, unhurried, entirely unbothered by the sight of an Indian man staring in panic at a signpost in his woods. He knew exactly what my situation was — he had, I suspect, seen this before. He directed me to a small unpaved road that wound down from where we stood. I had no choice but to trust him completely, which is the most exposed kind of trust there is.

I drove down the unpaved road. It was not built for a Nissan Altima. I leaned in, kept it slow, kept it careful. It seemed to go on forever, the trees pressing closer, the surface making its objections felt through the steering wheel.

Then, in my rear-view mirror — headlights. Another car, behind me, on the same impossible road.

Every Hollywood instinct fired at once. I gripped the wheel. I kept driving. And then, in the way that ordinary reality eventually asserts itself over an overactive imagination, both of us emerged onto something resembling a proper motorway, the other driver peeling off without drama, without incident, without being any kind of country legend at all.

I checked my printed maps. I could not work out where I was — no signpost, no landmark I could match to anything on paper. I knew only that Aurora and Romney lay ahead, if I was on the right road. I was mixing up Aurora with Anora — the Oscar-winning film — in my head, which tells you something about the state of my concentration at this point.

Then the fuel warning light came on.

---

I drove twenty more miles on patience and an impatient heart before civilisation appeared — an island of it, surrounded by mountains and streams and trees and animals and the vast indifference of wild America. There was a gas station. A big, tall girl came out before I had fully stopped and did the filling herself, which after my proud solo performance outside Lagootee felt both like a slight and a relief.

Inside was a store that sold everything. Of course it did — there would be nothing else for fifty or seventy miles in any direction. But more than the store, there was a community. People having breakfast together, collecting their weekly groceries, talking to each other with the ease of people who have no choice but to know one another well. I joined them for a while. I explained my trip — the Indian driving Highway 50 alone, the GPS gone, the signpost, the farmer, the unpaved road. They listened with the generous attention of people who have time and are not pretending otherwise. And they confirmed, which was the most important thing, that I was on the right road. Romney was ahead.

---

Romney stole something from me. So did Winchester, Virginia, which came shortly after.

Romney is the oldest town in West Virginia, though it wears this quietly. Winchester was full of flowers — it was March, and March in Virginia means blooms everywhere, small streams running clear, cafés with their doors open to the new warmth. I should have stopped. I wanted to stop. But Twinkle Apa and Subrat Bhai were waiting in Virginia with their daughter and their dog, and the pull of family — of known warmth after days of beautiful uncertainty — was stronger than any café or flowering street.

Some places you promise to return to. Winchester is on that list.

I drove on. The mountains gave way, the road widened, the signs began to count down the miles to Virginia. The jajabara was not over — but the wandering part of it was drawing to its close, and something warmer was waiting at the other end.

I put my foot down. I had earned this arrival.

Jajabara in the US of A (Part II: Of a Sleeping Town, a Kind Waitress and an Accidental Exit)

The loneliness started right after Normal.

Not a bad loneliness. Not the kind that unsettles. The kind that clarifies. The Nissan Altima and I slipped onto the highway and the world quietly rearranged itself into just two things — the road ahead and the bright Illinois sun coming straight at my face. The AC was perfect. The steering was responsive. The acceleration, smooth. I had worried about this car, this road, this side of the road. The car, at least, had decided not to worry with me.

It did not take long to notice something that the maps had hinted at but the road made obvious — Route 66 and the new freeway run almost parallel to each other, like an old story and its modern retelling. The Mother Road, all nostalgia and legend, quietly keeping pace with the interstate that replaced it. I found this strangely moving.

---

Lincoln, IL arrived on a Sunday morning, and Lincoln, IL was very much asleep.

This was the town named after Abraham Lincoln before he was Abraham Lincoln — before the presidency, before the legend, before the memorial. He christened it himself, this little town, with the juice of a watermelon, or so the story goes. I had expected something of that energy — some small civic pride on display, perhaps a statue mid-gesture, a diner with his face on the menu. What I found instead was a main square so quiet you could hear your own footsteps.

The deserted look of the town matched that of the road I had expected to be so happening. Route 66 — the most romanticised highway in the world — and on a Sunday morning in Lincoln, Illinois, it felt like everyone had been given the same memo to stay home.

I was hungry. I looked for a coffee shop and found instead a cheerful little store selling American merchandise — the kind of place that sells everything from fridge magnets to flags to things you didn't know you needed. I browsed. I bought nothing. Then I found coffee and some breakfast, and a newly opened bookshop that had no business being as good as it was in a town that was still rubbing its eyes. I encircled the main square once — still deserted — and pointed the Altima south towards St. Louis.

---

My colleague Kumud had lived in the US for a few years and had offered, with the generosity of someone who has genuinely been there, a fair amount of warning about St. Louis. He was descriptive. He was specific. He was, I would discover, not wrong.

I arrived in St. Louis excited nonetheless — the kind of excitement that a fair warning produces rather than diminishes. I pulled in for lunch and parked on the road. And then, sitting in the restaurant, I understood precisely what Kumud had meant. The worry about the car parked outside did not entirely leave me through the meal.

The food was good. The waitress was heavily pregnant, petite, and kinder than the afternoon required — she brought extra portions of bread without being asked, twice. These are the people you remember on a long road. Not the landmarks. The people.

I did look up for the Arch — you cannot miss the Gateway Arch, that great gleaming curve over the Mississippi, America's monument to its own westward ambition. I saw it. But what caught my eye and held it longer were the flowers growing alongside the road. Wildflowers, ordinary and unannounced, doing what wildflowers do — blooming without occasion.

And then, without entirely meaning to, I had exited St. Louis.

I realised this a few minutes later and kept driving. What was I going to do — go back? I was on the road precisely to be on the road. The exit, accidental as it was, felt like the right decision.

---

The plan had been to stop at Salem or Lawrenceville, both in southern Illinois, both reasonable places to end a first day. Then the rain arrived.

It did not drizzle. It battered. The kind of rain that makes you grip the wheel a little tighter and lean forward slightly as if that helps. Here I was — first day alone on American roads, wrong side of the car, unfamiliar state, and the sky had chosen this precise evening to make a point.

I remember thinking — why this challenge on the first day itself?

And then, almost immediately — well. You wanted this, didn't you?

I drove on. Through the rain, through Salem, through Lawrenceville, through the rest of southern Illinois which slid past in the dark and the wet. Somewhere along the way I crossed into Indiana without ceremony or intention. The rain did not let up. The road did not offer explanation.

Vincennes, Indiana appeared, and I let it stop me.

A motel. A room. Dry. I had driven through an entire state in a rainstorm on my first day alone in America and arrived, unplanned, in a city named after a French colonial fort on the banks of the Wabash River.

The jajabara had well and truly begun.

Jajabara in the US of A (Part I: Of Brownies, Borrowed Confidence and the Mother Road)

There is a particular kind of restlessness that hits you about a month before a long trip. Not anxiety. Not excitement exactly. Something in between — a low hum that gets louder the more you look at maps. I know this feeling well. It is the wanderlust arriving, right on schedule.

The occasion was CIES 2025, an academic conference in Chicago. A work trip, officially. But it was also close to a month long, loosely planned, and the US of A was at the other end of it. I had been here before — 2013, to be precise. And 2013 had left behind one solid regret.

I had chickened out.

Many would say that is quite non-typical of me. A senior partner at Accenture US had offered a fully sponsored, exciting business development trip along the famous west coast. California. The Pacific. Route 1 perhaps. And I said no. I don't fully remember why. But the regret, I remember very well.

So when Chicago came calling in 2025, I made a quiet decision. This time, I would make up for it. And some more.

---

A few things were decided early. The conference was in Chicago. I had friends and family to visit. I had to fly out of New York at the end. Everything in between — rest, I said, we'll figure out. A road trip or two across the heart of America. I romanticised about Route 66, explored the idea of the West Coast, and finally decided to head east from Chicago. The research only deepened the wanderlust. I downloaded maps from the Road Trip USA website. I applied for an international driving licence. I was going to drive in America.

My family had no idea.

My wife would have thrown a fit and threatened with everything she had to forbid me. 

---

Chicago received me at the historic Palmer House Hotel — 1641 rooms, one of the largest hotels in North America, and a history as layered as its lobby ceiling. It was here that Bertha Palmer invented the brownie. Yes, the brownie — that most beloved of baked goods — was born in this hotel, conjured up by the wife of Potter Palmer, who had gifted her this very hotel as an engagement present. Shah Jahan, you are not alone.

My friend Soumya Ranjan drove down from his home to downtown Chicago and we stayed together in the last day of the conference. And it was Soumya who, knowingly or unknowingly, would go on to play the most important role in this adventure — not as a companion on the road, but as the man who gave me the confidence to drive on it.

But first, the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited it together, that magnificent building that stands at the very spot where Swami Vivekananda addressed the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, on the sidelines of the World Fair. A moment of history quietly folded into an afternoon of art.

---

From Chicago, I headed south with Soumya to his home in Normal, IL, where his lovely family — two children and an amazingly warm wife — waited. She cooked Odia food for me. In Illinois. In America. Some things about Odia hospitality, I have decided, are simply immune to geography.

Over three days, Soumya let me drive. His Honda. On American roads. Left-hand drive, right-hand traffic — everything my hands and instincts had been trained against for decades. We made small trips — the supermarket, restaurants, a local brewery, the Rent-A-Car store. Each trip a little longer, a little more confident. Soumya guided me on the said and unsaid rules of American roads with the patience of a man who understood exactly what was at stake and the calm of someone who pretended he didn't.

By the time we walked into the Rent-A-Car store that evening, I was ready. We got a Nissan Altima. Available. Practical. Unassuming. Perfect.

---

The morning of departure, I gave myself one hour to pack. This is a ritual I trust — an hour of packing gives me the illusion, and sometimes the reality, of organisation. Before I left, I gifted Soumya a scarf of mine. Kissed his children goodbye. Stepped out into the fine Normal, IL morning.

Adventure and excitement were in my eyes. I know this because I could feel them there.

The Nissan Altima and I pulled out of Soumya's driveway and pointed ourselves south, toward the Mother Road. Route 66. And the first stop — Lincoln, IL. The only city named after Abraham Lincoln before he became president, christened by the man himself, legend has it, with the juice of a watermelon.

America, I was coming. Again. This time, I wasn't chickening out.

Data for Democracy

We shall delve into the matter of collection, storage and use of data or information in a democratic manner or in a democratic society. We shall limit that into data in the world of school education and the development sector. 

I was reading a book by Yuval Noah Harrari where he refers to certain fundamental principles of democracies that must be respected and followed in the digital age for democracies to survive and flourish! Even a small ray of optimism in these trying times is welcome.

I could not find the source of these principles, and even Yuval refers to them as universal, open, known for millenia kind of principles. He articulates these simple and almost spiritual sounding principles and juxtaposes them against AI (what else you expect in these times in a book called Nexus!). He details how these principles must be honoured and offers a few solutions as well.  

Now, let’s talk about them in the context of school education in general and that of India in particular.  

Benovolence: The first principle has to be that the data or information, so painstakingly collected, managed, analysed, visualised and presented has to help the person from (or about) whom the data is being collected. Yuval gives a simple example of our physician collecting information from us with the primary motive of healing us. Schools are almost invariably the primary source of all data that we later see analysed and presented at different levels related to access and quality of school education. School information systems such as the U-DISE+ collect information on almost all aspects of schools - enrollment, teachers, physical resources, funds and other details. The principle of benevolence is met only when the information collected is not just for reporting and statistical publication but also as a planning and resourcing tool. So, when use of U-DISE data was mandated for SSA, RMSA and later SmSA planning and budgeting exercise, the schools understood that reporting of accurate data ensures that  adequate resources in form of additional classrooms, toilets, drinking water facility, boundary walls, labs, assistive devices for CwSN etc. could be provisioned for the school subject to availability of budget. While the planning, budgeting and resourcing is a long process from school to block to district and further to state and centre, it starts from the schools providing timely and accurate data with an expectation that it will benefit from the process.  

Extending the argument to learning data, we must keep this in mind that all information collected on learning of children must come back to benefit & help the child ultimately! 

Decentalisation: There is a great temptation of centralised systems and structures. The design is usually neat, efficient, has to be understood once, allows for control and correction at one place etc. The cons predictably are extreme dependence on the central system and architecture and privacy concerns. But, the larger concern is that of the central system being the only source of data or truth and then it being subject to manipulation. No information system is infallible and each would have its own incentives and disincentives to report data in a way that suits their narrative. 

I loved this line “for the survival of democracy, some inefficiency is a feature, not a bug”. Having multiple databases and information channels (government, courts, media, academia, private, NGOs) are essential to have self-correcting mechanisms where they balance each other out and act as almost fact-checks. 

Starting from a child, who often asks his elder sibling to sign the report card if not happy with the results to private schools and their ways of reporting fees and expenses to the government schools, under and over-reporting resources and performance respectively, each have their own reasons to report data that suits them. Hence, multiple reporting of the same data, say learning levels of children is not a bad thing! We must welcome government, private and community assessing and reporting data about their children. 

Mutuality or mutual accountability: This principle is easy to understand but hard to implement in the hierarchical world that we live in. Put simply, there should be flow of information both ways and not just bottom to top. Accountability, similarly, should also be a two way street. 

In our context, if a school has provided information on the number of children accurately it has the right to demand that the basic entitlements such as textbooks, uniforms and mid-day-meals it receives are adequate and timely. 

To extend this to learning, the “long route of accountability” that RISE study refers to starts with the citizen electing a government and holding them accountable for quality education of their children, the government then has an extensive system of ministry, education department and frontline workers such as teachers who are engaged by the government to ensure this promise of learning is met back to the parent-citizen. 

Change and rest: Yuval goes on to articulate that any  democratic data system or government for that matter should allow both - the opportunity to change and the option of rest. He elucidates the necessity of the first concept by taking an example of a system that doesn’t allow humans the option to change by any means - of action or opportunity such as the Hindu caste system. While several hundred years ago, the caste system was tightly coupled to the occupation and was even more binding, even today, the caste of the Hindu person can not change. Any democratic society must allow the citizens the opportunity to change and for that provide data, information and if needed, appropriate resources to do so. That is the basis of the social and political contract that defines a democratic rule.

At the other end of the spectrum, there have been sovereigns and heads of government that consider their citizens as mere clay toys that they can mould and change as they wish and as many times as they wish. Such absolute denial of the agency of the individual and participation has been met with strong individual and collective protest leading to violent revolutions across geographies and at different points of time in history. 

There has to be a balance between the amount of data and information needed for the basic (and the first here) principle of benevolence which the state and the citizen agree using principles of mutuality (second principle here) to bring about the desired change. Democracies and systems evolve and there might be a need to change the existing norms and practices but yet again the same principles should be applied. 

There is another beautiful line from the book that would sum this write up and my feelings “human life is a balance act between endeavouring to improve ourselves and accepting who we are”. 

Kumaon Chronicles - the day of the leopard

S and I arrived just before her birthday at Peora village, near Satkhol of the Mukteshwar district in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand as we have been doing now for a couple of years. Kumaon has been an ideal escape for us for from the heat, dust and lust of Delhi during the summers and over the visits we have made small connections with the small community of locals, regular visitors and people of the region including our wonderful host and home stay manager Yashwant and his family.

After allowing the restless thoughts of work and impulses of mind to settle down briefly in the evening with the nice cup of warm tea, soaking in the breathtaking views of Himalayas from our place and tuning in to the music of the birds, crickets and animals of the jungle we went to sleep with a plan to go on one of our familiar trails for a walk the next morning. The delicious parathas made over traditional chulha, the fresh curd and the finger-licking apricot aachar made from the fruits from the orchard of our host, briefly challenged the plans of the small trek with a temptation to lie down in the cozy bed and enjoy a morning siesta. We headed off, only because of another temptation - the sumptuous lunch that we would not have appetite for if we don’t walk off at least few of the parathas. 

S and I started a conversation about consistency and experimentation. I called it the choice between security of familiarity versus the thrill of exploring the unfamiliar territory, quite literally in this case. We know this about ourselves - Yin and Yang. S would always prefer the comfort of the known and I would always go for the anticipated variety that the unknown offers. Even on our way up from the Kathgodam station, we talked about taking the familiar route we had taken last time and having our food at the same restaurant on the way or choosing a different path and a different option to eat. I prevailed this time. The route was much more picturesque with the unusually calm Bhimtal lake almost wearing a deserted look, again unusual for this time of the year where tourists from Delhi and nearby areas flock the hills and recreate the same crowd, cacophony and chaos that one tries to escape from. The restaurant was nice as well and just as I was revealing in my small victory in favour of experimentation and ‘trying the new’; the food undid us. No, not right away! It was nice when we tasted and ate it but signs of it not being fresh started showing up midway of the two hour drive to our place and that part of the choice didn’t augur well for us. 

So, when it came to deciding which trail to take, we clearly tilted towards the familiar route we had taken quite a few times last year. S was quick to point out the virtues of consistency, treading carefully with a stick in her hand and quipping how the route is almost the same even after a year with no noise of new construction or no signs of destruction of trees and habitat. I was nodding my head and trying to walk past her when I realised that S has either stopped or suddenly disappeared into the thin mountain air. I could neither hear her soft voice, or footsteps or the prodding of stones with her stick. I then heard a loud voice, almost a roar ! I turned back to see S almost frozen, mid-way of her next step, mouth wide open and face red and eyes almost protruding out. It was clearly the reaction to the loud roar of an animal or a machine. I quickly told S with a shrugg of head that it must be a machine. There are no animals here so close to the main road, certainly not a leopard and definitely not at this time of the day. I wasn’t so scared myself though but I knew even if I concurred slightly with a ‘maybe’, we would have to immediately retreat and the next trails and walks would be in serious jeopardy. I suggested that we move ahead and reach to the tea shop and houses ahead in the trail. I also tried to make light of the matter joking that if a leopard really shows up, there is nothing for us to think and do! Whatever will be done, will be done by the beast, which can run upto 90 mph, can climb tall trees, has sharp nails and ferocious teeth. We are helpless in every aspect. The joke didn’t help much but the prospect of reaching habition and seeing another human face pushed S forward and she managed to reach the tea shop faster than me. People are mostly driven by two things, pleasure or fear ! 

For the next part of our walk back, at the tea shop, at the barbershop and to every other person whom S could meet and speak to, she had the same two question. 

1. “Did you also hear a roar?”

2. “Is it possible that a leopard was around”  

Most people, after giving an empathetic ear to this city dweller dismissed her apprehensions by citing the location and this time of the day. Some women, who had seen us walking on the that route remarked casually though that there might be a leopard who would have lent out that roar from far below in the dense jungle but you heard it here. So, there was a leopard ! S processed it in her own way and even at lunch and dinner she kept asking our hosts the same question and they kept brushing her excitement aside. S even tried to listen to voices of leopard, barking deer and other animals that were suggested by our host who was supremely confident that it couldn’t be the leopard. S was as sure as one is of one’s fear and I was as unsure as one is of anything one is unsure of. I had heard stories of leopard picking up one of the dogs of my previous hosts and had heard a roar of leopard once. I had of course been fascinated by Jim Corbett and his stories of the man-eater of Kumaon as a child which somewhat dwindled into disappointment in adulthood as I heard from many people of their disappointment of only seeing the footmarks or dung of the beautiful animal at the national park that bears the name of the famous English hunter. I was happy in my mind that these creatures still exist in real and not just in fiction and travel stories and am always keen to see them in the wild before we destroy these thriving ecosystems with our greed and avarice.

Clearly, S could not be persuaded for another morning trek even though a new trail was suggested this time. Thankfully I had some company in another family who had come in to the stay at the guesthouse. Ishan and I started early at 6.30 after failed attempts to persuade anyone else to join us in our leisurely walk to another small village through a jungle. Our host had suggested this route and cleared it of any wild animal, even sharing that this is the route taken by children of the village to walk many miles to come to their school - Aarohi Bal Sansar. We kept having small conversations as our walk started but as soon as the thickness of the vegetation, green cover of the trees increased and the width of the trail decreased our talks decreased and pauses of silence increased. I was walking ahead and we were super focussed on the path ahead. It was silent, it was almost meditative. There was slight wetness and dampness on the path, mostly due to the leaves wet due to the morning dew. The sun was up and peeped though the pine trees to look at two men from the cities trying to walk steadily though the unfamiliar terrain of the jungle. We only had the familiarity of our breaths, our steps and each other. Ishan started to share a little more about his life and was trying to catch up with me. I slowed down my pace as I realised he was having slight difficulty in breathing and talking at the same time. 

Suddenly, I stopped as I saw something of a size of a Nilgai and then of the size of a goat moving almost like a bullet in front of me. I then saw a majestic, thick and big tail and the ‘thing’ vanish into the vegetation downhill. There was no doubt this time. It was the mountain leopard. A fully grown adult, dashing at maximum speed from uphill above the small foot trail to the jungle below at a distance of hardly twenty feet from me. It was so swift and fast that I had literally a fraction of a second to process and react. I reacted quite calmly to my own surprise and turned back to see Ishan also stopped and paused in his track, mouth wide open, eyed protruding and almost looking at me for answer or confirmation. 

“It’s a leopard” I said it three times. Only then my heart started to process the information and started to beat a bit faster. 

“yes, I saw something move very fast, are you sure it’s a leopard”

“200%! It had either seen us from above and didn’t wish to engage with us or it had a prey downhill that it dashed to chase and hunt”. I realised it was alternatively looking like a nilgai and a goat to me in two different frames my eyes could capture because of the speed that these magnificent beasts can manage to move. 

The next thought in my head was to go and figure out what type of leopard we had seen. It was very clearly different from cheetahs that are yellow in colour, have dark, distinguished spots and are very lanky in shape. I did not manage to see the face of the animal but the entire big back was muscular and hefty. 

Then the thought of our safety came and then Ishan followed up with the question - do we go ahead or go back. I thought for a while and then decided in favour of the familiarity of the road we had already covered and proximity of the human life there versus the unfamiliar jungle ahead and uncertainty of finding another person or house ahead. We certainly did not want to have the leopard, now familiar with us anywhere near us or to do anything to us ! We silently and softly walked back. There was no or little talk. This was pure fear and I am sure images of what will happen if the beast turns back or another one shows up were playing up in both our minds. Both of us picked up a stone each from the ground and grabbed it tight, more with hope than any strategy to fight or tackle the more powerful, faster and well-equipped master predator! 

We walked up to the main road and while I was keen to go back to check on my phone what kind of leopard we had spotted, Ishan was keen on tea! We walked up to the nearest market, finished two cups of chai each at a local shop and walked back to our home stay on the same trail that S and I had taken the other day. 

I could hear a lot of commotion in the room next to us with Ishan, Ekaansh, his son and wife Meenakshi exchanging exclamations, excitement and ethusisasm. Meanwhile, S lifted her head up from the razaai (blanket) and asked me with half-opened eyes, “what happened?”

Nothing!   

A visit to Kohima war cemetery

Sabhi ka khoon hai shaamil yahan ki mitti mein,

Kisi ke baap ka ye Hindustaan thode hai !

Dr. Rahat Indori

These lines have found resonance with certain sections of our population in the light of some of the recent political developments, especially around identity - NRC, CAA, NPR and whatever one may choose to call it. Who is the "original" citizen and who "came from outside"?

The question is very simple with respect to international travel and a necessary document called Passport would give simple answers to that question and Immigration and VISA offices across the world will take note and either welcome, detain or deport. But, when this question is asked of people living in a particular landmass, say a village, town, city or state, there could be some complications.

The first being, "Why?". Okay, the government has the right to ask. So, let's move on. We will revisit this in a bit. Second, is of  "When?", of the timeline. The history of mankind is a history of movement. Of people moving physically, moving their cattle, possessions, language, food, clothes and ways of living with them. So, everyone came from somewhere or is going somewhere. In all likelihood, except the tribal population who have continued to live in and around the same place where their forefathers, the very first of them lived. Even, among them, the nomads and pastoral community move quite a bit and have a very different lifestyle. So, you or your parents or grandparents might be living in this place for a hundred years or two hundred, what about say 500 or 800 or 1500 years back, would you know? Where did that person come from? What language he spoke, what was his religion? His food habits? His culture? Also, if you are living here (could be any city, state) today, where would your children and grandchildren be? Can you bet they would not move to another city, state or country ? Oh, they would go formally, through proper channels! Immigrants all the same. Useful to remember another beautiful quote by a great statesman Franklin D. Roosevelt comes to mind in such troubling times. “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

Well, I had a very interesting reflection on these topics on a bright, sunny, February morning at Kohima while I was taking a walk at the War Cemetery. Here, at the heart of this beautiful state capital of Nagaland, lies this beautiful and serene War Cemetery. The cemetery is at the location where a decisive battle was won by the Allied Forces during the Second World War, forcing the Japanese army to retreat. 

Reaching Kohima during April 1944, the Japanese 15th Army occupied a strategic location on Garrison Hill and continually attacked a small contingent of the Commonwealth forces, which successfully held their ground until reinforcements were brought in. In the battle at the tennis ground (now marked by white concrete lines) of the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow (which was destroyed during the war), which also involved hand-to-hand fighting between the opposing forces, the Commonwealth forces prevailed over the Japanese forces and forced them to retreat in defeat. There were heavy casualties on both sides. (but) This battle was the turning point for the Allied forces. (Source: Wikipedia)

While the road outside is busy, there is a calmness and serenity of air once you step in and start looking at the well-manicured grass lawns, the winding, stony pathways and the flower plants, mostly red roses. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), which maintains this cemetery among many others in the world, there are 1,420 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War at this cemetery, and a memorial to an additional 917 Hindu and Sikh soldiers who were cremated in accordance with their faith. The memorials are in the form of stone markers embedded with bronze plaques carrying the name of each Commonwealth soldier who died on the Kohima battlefield. 

It is when you start looking at the seemingly uniform epitaphs that you enter a different metaphysical world. You may start from anywhere and initially these may seem quite uniform, military-style and you may be capturing the names of regiment, persons and symbols along with the messages and words written on them. Some of them are deeply personal, touching and one is bound to be moved by the sincerity of them - often by a father, a wife, a sister, family member or friends. 

While the plaques are uniform in nature, the messages and their variety will create vivid pictures in your mind and keep you engaged. These memorials truly reflect the Commonwealth or the British Raj of those times. The soldiers who laid down their lives were from Britain, Scotland, India (all of India), Sri Lanka belonging to different faiths.

There was Gyan Bahdur Limbu, 7th Gurkha Rifles, age twenty-two. I repeat twenty-two. 

Corporal Fletcher, Manchester Regiment, age twenty-six. 

Captain Mitchel, of Rajput Regiment with a beautiful message "We have fought the good fight. Grant to us, eternal rest, O Lord!"

There was a Mr. Mathew, there was Muhammad Sakhi and many more.  

Some of the other messages were 

"When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today"

Yet, there were many that did not have names or their religion could not have been established. They were simply named 'A soldier of the 1939-45 War. Known to God'

So, this land, this country, belongs to all of them. They have lost their lives, fed this earth with their bones and blood. Their children, grandchildren, their neighbours, friends are all here. With or without papers or documents. A nation is not a paper or a few letters written down on a passport. It is  far more. It is an idea, shared ideal rather for which people are willing to travel thousands of miles to risk it all and lay down their lives. Fight shoulder to shoulder, as soldiers, as brothers, in life and in death, without any other thought than that of valour and victory. A nation is that what unites, binds us together.