The Great Indian School Hunt

The Great Indian School Hunt: A Father, a Son and Eight Schools

There is a great deal of discussion these days about the condition of government schools in India. Before I join the chorus, let me make one thing clear: I myself am a product of a government-aided school in Delhi.

It was certainly not a modern school by today's standards. No smart classrooms, no air-conditioned laboratories, no fancy gadgets—probably not even a smartboard in anyone's wildest imagination! But the teachers were sincere. They came to school, taught their subjects and, most importantly, did their job faithfully.

And somehow, I survived the system and eventually passed out of IIT Kharagpur!

My son Anish had a rather more adventurous education. Because of my transferable job in BHEL and my involvement in power-station project execution, he changed schools eight times!

You could say he had a pan-India education without ever applying for admission to a pan-India school.

The first stop — Singrauli

After completing Kindergarten at St. Cathedral in Delhi, I was transferred to Singrauli Super Thermal Power Station. I put Anish in St. Joseph's School in the township.

During admission, the principal, a padre, interviewed Anish in English. Fortunately, the boy could answer him reasonably well.

Then came another father with his son. The principal asked him what he did.

The man proudly replied that he was a shovel operator in the coal mines adjoining the power plant.

The principal then asked, "Do you speak English at home?"

The gentleman replied, rather proudly, "Na ji, na."

I liked that school immediately. Here was a school where the son of a shovel operator could aspire to study alongside the children of engineers and officers. The father could afford the fees and, more importantly, he wanted his son to get a good education.

Anish studied there till Class II.

Back to Delhi — and the Bengali problem

Then came another transfer to Delhi.

My first choice was Kendriya Vidyalaya. No admission.

I tried another English-medium school near the Western Extension Area. Again, no admission.

By then I had taken a small flat in West Patel Nagar, close to my parents, who were living in WEA after my father had retired and had to vacate the government accommodation at Wilson Square, Gole Market.

I had run out of options.

So I did something that every Indian father understands perfectly well.

I used my influence!

I approached my old school, Raisina Bengali Higher Secondary School at Gole Market. The principal, a former Army man, kindly agreed to admit Anish.

There was, however, one small problem.

Anish didn't know Bengali.

The principal looked at me and said, "He will have to learn Bengali during the summer vacation because he will be entering Class IV."

Luckily, Mrs Gupta, who had taught me years earlier, was still living near our house. I approached her.

"Madam, I have a small problem."

She probably knew what was coming.

She agreed to teach Anish Bengali.

And somehow Anish sailed from Class III into Class IV and even managed to pass Bengali!

My son was now becoming a linguist by force rather than by choice.

Wanakbori — the English-medium school

I stayed in Delhi for about a year and was then transferred to Wanakbori in Gujarat in 1985.

There was an English-medium school at Shivalia where most of the children of my BHEL colleagues studied. I took Anish there.

The infrastructure looked good. But I had one doubt.

I discovered that many of the teachers were wives of my BHEL colleagues.

The principal sensed my hesitation.

He called a boy.

"This is Indranil. You can speak to him in English."

Indranil spoke excellent English. Smart boy, confident, fluent.

I was impressed.

Admission done!

Later I discovered that there were about twenty students in the class, but only five had literate parents. The rest were children of labourers.

Then I became friendly with Mr Purkayastha, the project manager of the coal-handling plant supplied by MAMC. One day we visited his quarter.

And there was Indranil!

I told his wife about my impressive encounter with Indranil during admission.

She burst out laughing.

"The principal does that with every new parent!"

It turned out that Indranil had arrived in Wanakbori only a year earlier and had learnt English in his previous school.

So much for my scientific assessment of the school's English standard!

I also became uncomfortable because most of the teachers were wives of my junior colleagues. I felt they might be giving Anish marks with a little extra generosity.

A father's suspicion is sometimes more powerful than an examination result.

Baroda — boarding school at last

I decided to look for a better school in Baroda.

I visited Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. They had a hostel, and the principal understood my predicament. He admitted Anish directly to the next class.

For the next two years, Anish stayed in the hostel.

It was a massive school and, in my opinion, one of the best in Baroda at that time. There were four football fields, and playing after lunch was compulsory.

Now that was education!

Anish made friends with children of well-known artists and businessmen. Life in the hostel gave him a completely different exposure.

But something else happened there which, at the time, seemed like a minor matter.

The computer arrives quietly

In 1986, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan started an additional computer class for students who were interested. It was not part of the regular curriculum and required an extra fee.

I paid the fee and put Anish into the class.

That was the beginning of his tryst with computers.

During our Vizag days, I continued this by making him attend the summer computer classes conducted by APTECH.

So, while I was busy running around looking for schools, admission, languages and suitable teachers, his computer skills were quietly being sharpened in the background.

The irony is that I had absolutely no idea what was coming!

This was the mid-1980s. The IT revolution was still largely invisible to people like me. Computers were simply something interesting and useful for a child to learn.

I certainly did not imagine that computers would transform the world by the late 1990s and beyond.

So, quite unknowingly, I had put Anish on a road that would eventually become his career.

Vizag — three languages strike again!

In 1988, I was transferred from BHEL to Vizag Steel Plant.

Naturally, the school hunt started all over again.

I first took Anish to DAV School at Ukkunagaram, the township of Vizag Steel Plant.

At the same time, I was trying to get him into Kendriya Vidyalaya.

After some effort—and, I confess, with the help of the CMD of the Steel Plant—I managed to get him admitted to KV.

But the famous three-language formula now entered our lives.

Anish was comfortable with English and Hindi. The third language had to be either Telugu or Sanskrit.

I decided that Sanskrit was the lesser of the two evils.

Then came the next question:

Who would teach him Sanskrit?

I could teach him most subjects, but the Sanskrit I had studied at school was hardly enough to prepare him for his class.

Fortunately, my neighbour Mr Bandopadhyay came to the rescue. His father had been a Sanskrit pandit.

And so Anish's education continued—with a rotating cast of English teachers, Bengali teachers, Sanskrit teachers, hostel wardens and, of course, his permanently available father-tutor!

Farakka — finally, some stability

In December 1991, I was transferred to Farakka, just when Anish was preparing for his Class X Board examination.

Luckily, Farakka had a Kendriya Vidyalaya.

He joined there, completed his schooling and finally passed both his Class X Board examination and Higher Secondary.

At last! No more school hunting.

I think I was more relieved than he was.

And the computer class turned out to matter

Looking back now, the most interesting part of this whole story is perhaps the little computer class I put him into in Baroda.

At the time, I was simply trying to expose him to something new. Then came the APTECH summer classes in Vizag.

I had no grand plan.

I had no crystal ball.

I had no idea that the IT industry was going to explode.

But the foundation was being laid quietly.

Today, that little boy who went through eight schools, several cities, different curricula and multiple languages is a successful IT engineer in Australia. He went on to complete his Master's degree in Information Technology from Griffith University and built his career in the IT field.

Looking back, I sometimes feel that while I was busy changing his schools, the computer was quietly changing his future!

---

So where is the real problem?

That is why the current debate about government schools interests me.

The problem is not simply government school versus private school.

A good school ultimately depends on good teachers, committed management and an environment where children are encouraged to learn.

My own government-aided school in Delhi did not have fancy infrastructure, but we had teachers who took their responsibility seriously.

And my experience with Anish taught me another lesson.

Education is not merely a building, an English-medium label, smart classrooms or high marks.

It is about giving a child a strong foundation and the confidence to face the next environment.

Anish had to adjust every time we moved.

Just when he made friends, another transfer came. Just when he became comfortable with a teacher, we moved. One school taught Bengali, another expected Telugu or Sanskrit. One school had a hostel, another was in a power-station township. One curriculum differed from another.

Yet children are remarkably adaptable. Perhaps much more adaptable than their parents.

I had the advantage of being an engineer, having a transferable job and knowing people in different places. I could run from pillar to post, persuade principals, find tutors and occasionally even use a little "influence."

But what about an ordinary parent who has none of these?

That is where our education system needs to think harder.

Because if a reasonably educated father like me had to struggle so much to provide continuity of basic education to his son, imagine the struggle of a parent who has neither the information nor the connections nor the money to manoeuvre through the system.

And perhaps this is the part of the government-school debate we sometimes miss.

We should not judge education only by buildings and facilities. We should ask whether the teacher is sincere, whether the child is learning, whether he is being encouraged to think—and whether the system gives every child a fair chance.

My own journey from a government-aided school to IIT taught me that.

Anish's journey through eight schools taught me something else: a child's education is sometimes less about the school he attends and more about the opportunities he encounters along the way.

And finally, there is one more lesson.

Sometimes parents think they are carefully designing their children's future.

In reality, we often just open a few doors and hope they walk through the right one.

In 1986, I paid an extra fee for a computer class without having the faintest idea where computers would take us.

Life, as usual, knew better than I did. 😄

And perhaps Anish deserves a special certificate:

"Successfully completed schooling after surviving eight schools, several cities, multiple curricula, three languages, one overenthusiastic engineer-father—and one accidental introduction to the IT revolution."

I wonder whether any university offers a degree for that! 😄

Some conversations are brewed, not planned."

It was raining in the morning, and rain has a strange effect on me—it makes going to the office appear almost like a violation of human rights. I therefore decided that office could manage without me for one day.

Madhuri, however, had a more constructive suggestion.

"Let us go shopping at Spencer's in South City."

Now that sounded considerably more dangerous than going to the office.

After lunch, Gopal drove us to South City and parked the car in the basement. Madhuri picked up a shopping trolley and marched into Spencer's with the determination of a field commander.

We were there for a very simple mission: vegetables, rice, dal and a few other household necessities.

But Spencer's had other plans.

To reach the humble vegetables and dal section, we had to negotiate an obstacle course of biscuits, mixtures, chocolates, breakfast cereals, sauces, noodles and what seemed like the entire packaged-food industry. And, as if that wasn't enough, every beauty-product brand appeared to have stationed a young sales girl at its border.

The moment we entered their territory, they started advancing.

"Sir, would you like to see our new…"

"No, thank you."

"Madam, we have a special offer…"

"No, thank you."

We dodged them like seasoned political campaigners avoiding questions from journalists.

Finally, after crossing what felt like several international borders, we reached the promised land—vegetables, rice and dal.

Mission accomplished, we proceeded towards the bakery counter. Madhuri selected some pastries for home, while I spotted something far more important—a cup of Darjeeling tea.

I ordered one and occupied a table in the seating area outside.

The tea arrived hot and fragrant. Madhuri didn't order tea, but naturally, after watching me enjoy mine, she took a sip from my cup. Marriage has many such invisible taxes.

A lady who looked distinctly Southeast Asian then occupied the chair opposite me. Her driver was busy doing the shopping. She ordered a cup of tea and initially seemed a little hesitant when I struck up a conversation.

Then she noticed that I had left the two little sachets of sugar untouched.

She laughed.

"I will put both of them in my tea, though my doctor has strictly told me not to take sugar. I am diabetic."

I laughed.

"Then enjoy life while you can!"

That broke the ice.

I asked her whether she was of Chinese origin. Kolkata has a long association with the Chinese community, so it was not an entirely unreasonable guess.

She burst out laughing.

"No, I am from the Philippines."

The moment she said Manila, my mind—which has a talent for wandering off on its own errands—shot straight to Ferdinand Marcos, martial law, and that whole extraordinary spectacle of 1986 when the strongman finally fled the Malacañang Palace and the world discovered, with some astonishment, that his wife Imelda owned somewhere in the neighbourhood of three thousand pairs of shoes. I did some quick and slightly rude mental arithmetic—if she was in her late fifties or sixties now, she would have been a schoolgirl during the People Power Revolution, perhaps old enough to remember the tanks on EDSA, or perhaps young enough that it was just a story her parents told over dinner. I decided against asking. Some historical curiosities are best kept for Wikipedia rather than tea-table conversation with someone you have known for ninety seconds.

From there, the conversation changed character completely.

She started talking—and I realised that she had probably been waiting for an opportunity to talk to someone who would simply listen.

It is curious how people sometimes pour out their hearts to complete strangers. Perhaps there is a strange freedom in speaking to somebody whom you know you may never meet again.

She told me she had been married to Captain Ghosal, a ship captain, for 32 years. He had passed away in 2024.

Then her voice became serious.

Her husband, she told me, had been deeply affected by the gruesome murder of the young doctor at R G Kar.

"How can any human being do such a thing?" she asked. "What kind of person can commit such butchery?"

There was no need for me to answer. Some questions are better left hanging in the air.

Naturally, I wanted to know how she had met Captain Ghosal.

She told me that she had been working for a shipping company in Manila when a friend introduced her to Captain Ghosal. There was a three-month courtship—and then marriage.

"Only three months?"

She smiled.

Apparently that was quite enough.

She told me she had never wanted to marry a Filipino man. According to her, among Filipino men, having relationships with other women was, in her experience, rather socially tolerated. Wives might know that after office hours their husbands could visit another woman—even a prostitute—and it was not necessarily treated as a family catastrophe.

I remembered having seen *Too Late the Hero*, the Michael Caine film set in the Philippines, and wondered whether that rather liberal social atmosphere had something to do with what she was describing.

While listening to her, my thoughts wandered to my friends Jaggi and Sikka. With conversations like this, one never knows where the mind will travel!

Then she suddenly laughed.

"You Indians have such a strange system of arranged marriage. Two complete strangers are brought together and told to get married!"

I had to agree that, when put that way, it does sound rather dramatic.

She then narrated what had apparently amused her enormously.

She had once asked the wife of one of Captain Ghosal's three brothers:

"When did you first meet your husband?"

The answer was:

"At our marriage ceremony."

She gave a tremendous laugh.

"Imagine! Two complete strangers meeting for the first time at their wedding and then sleeping together that night. How embarrassing!"

I tried to explain that our ancestors had probably developed a very efficient system for eliminating unnecessary dating expenses.

But by then we were both laughing.

After that delightful and rather unexpected conversation, Madhuri and I took leave of our new acquaintance.

On the way out, I suddenly noticed the wine shop.

Well, after spending an afternoon negotiating supermarkets, beauty-product sales girls, Filipino marital philosophy, a stray detour through Marcos-era history and the mysteries of arranged marriage, I felt I had earned a little something.

So I ducked into the shop and bought a bottle of Sangam, an Indian whisky I had heard was quite good.

After all, every intellectual discussion deserves a suitable conclusion.

And mine had started with rain, passed through Darjeeling tea, made a brief stopover in Malacañang Palace, and ended with Sangam.

A perfectly ordinary shopping trip—by Indian standards.

The delivery boy and the Professor

The Delivery Boy and the Professor

I was not born to become a philosopher, historian, or man of letters. I was born to carry hot food in a hot bag through a hot city, which is also a kind of education if you think about it. The city teaches you many things when you are a delivery boy: which gates open with one buzz and which gates need three calls, which security guards are strict in the morning and sentimental at night, which apartment dogs are brave only behind closed doors, and which customers will say “Come quickly” even though they placed the order after making the kitchen prepare their soul with twenty-seven instructions.

My name is Arjun, and I deliver for Swiggy.

If you think this is a simple job, I salute your innocence. On paper, it is food delivery. In reality, it is fieldwork in human nature. Every day I meet people who are hungry, angry, lonely, drunk, suspicious, romantic, secretive, or simply confused by the existence of stairs. I have seen boys hiding in lobby corners to eat chicken curry because their homes run on pure vegetarian principles. I have seen husbands order dinner while standing outside the gate because wife has locked the door and stopped answering calls, which is one way to serve justice in marriage. I have seen people fight with the app, with the weather, with the lift, with the food, and once, I am fairly sure, with their own destiny.

But the strangest and nicest thing that ever happened to me began on a night when I expected nothing except one more delivery and one more exhausted ride home.

It was near the end of my shift. The sky had gone that dull blue-grey that looks like the city is tired of pretending to be beautiful. My phone battery was low. My back was tired. My stomach had already given up hope. My last delivery was to an old residential complex with a proper old-money kind of gate, the sort that makes you feel you should speak in a softer voice even before anyone tells you to. The guard checked my bag, scanned me with the patience of a customs officer, and waved me in.

The customer had ordered fish curry, rice, and a bottle of cola. The kind of order that says one of two things: either the person is very hungry, or the person has decided to be emotionally complicated for dinner. I climbed the steps, crossed a corridor smelling faintly of incense and polish, and stopped at the right door.

Before I could press the bell, the door opened.

An old woman stood there in a pale cotton sari, hair tied neatly, spectacles low on her nose, expression calm and slightly amused, as if she had opened the door to receive not just food but a thesis defense.

“You’re late,” she said.

I checked my phone instantly, because in my world “late” can mean forty seconds and a customer can make it sound like the Second World War has begun again.

“I’m sorry, madam. Traffic near EM Bypass—”

She raised one hand. “Traffic is always near EM Bypass. Come in.”

I blinked.

She looked past me at the delivery bag and repeated, “Come in. You have been standing outside long enough. Sit down.”

“Madam, I can’t. I have another delivery after this.”

“Then sit for five minutes and become a person again.”

It was such an unusual instruction that I obeyed before my brain could object. She stepped aside. The apartment was quiet, spacious, and full of books. Not decorative books arranged to impress guests, but real books with use in them. There were shelves, stacks, a reading lamp, framed photographs, and the smell of old paper mixed with food from the kitchen. The room had the peaceful dignity of a place where conversations had happened for years.

On one wall hung a portrait of a serious-looking man in a formal coat. I was staring at it when she said, “Do not worry. That is not my husband. That is a dead man who mattered too much to some people and not enough to others.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

She smiled, just a little. “Good. You have a sense of humour. That helps. Now open the parcel.”

I hesitated. “Madam, usually I should just hand over—”

“Usually,” she said, “is where all boring people live.”

I opened the food packet and placed it on the table. She opened the lid, looked at the contents, nodded approvingly, and then did something no customer had ever done in my entire working life.

She asked, “Have you eaten?”

I said the standard lie. “Yes, madam.”

She looked at me over her spectacles. “You are lying badly.”

I laughed again, because she was right. I had been out since afternoon and had eaten nothing except one overfried samosa that I had bought because it looked sad and I felt responsible.

She went into the kitchen and came back with a plate, a spoon, and a steel glass of water. Then she placed another plate near me and said, “Sit.”

“Madam—”

“Arjun, sit. I am a retired professor. I have spent half my life giving orders to youth who thought they knew everything. You can trust me to know when someone needs dinner.”

She knew my name because it was on the app, of course, but still it felt like she had known me longer than fifteen seconds.

I sat.

She served me a little rice and fish curry from her own plate. “Eat,” she said. “A man cannot think properly on an empty stomach.”

I had expected the usual customer routine: sign here, take the food, leave quickly, no eye contact, no conversation, definitely no existential reflection. Instead I was being fed by a stranger in a calm apartment full of history. So naturally, because life likes to become strange just when you think you have understood it, I asked, “Why are you alone, madam?”

She did not seem offended.

“Because,” she said, “my husband died twelve years ago, my son lives in Singapore, my daughter in Mumbai, and the rest of the family treats me like an antique vase: valuable, fragile, and best left in a corner.”

She took a spoonful of rice, chewed thoughtfully, and added, “Also because I enjoy being alone most days. But sometimes I do not enjoy it enough.”

That sentence stayed with me. It was so simple and so true that it sounded like something from a book, but it came from her kitchen, not from literature.

I must have looked awkward, because she waved the spoon toward the portrait on the wall and said, “Eat properly. You look like a man waiting for police.”

I laughed. “Madam, I am always waiting for police. Sometimes the customer says wrong house and then police-like decision is needed.”

She threw her head back and laughed too, a proper laugh, the kind that fills a room and makes it less lonely.

Then she began to talk.

Not small talk. Not weather talk. Real talk. History talk. She asked me where I studied. I told her I had studied up to college but had to start working. She asked me what I read. I admitted I liked books when I could get them, mostly novels. She asked what I was reading at the moment.

I had that book in my bag because I carried it everywhere and read it in stolen moments between orders. I had been reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, though I had been saying the title in my head like a man trying to pronounce a foreign train station. I told her the name.

Her face changed at once.

“Ah,” she said. “So you have taste.”

I smiled. “I don’t know about taste, madam. I only know I like the book because the man is trapped in one hotel and still behaves like he owns the world.”

She pointed her spoon at me. “That is not a small thing. In history, confinement often reveals more than freedom. You should know this.”

I asked, half joking, “Madam, do you also have a history degree inside the fish curry?”

She was delighted. “Exactly! Very good. The fish is important. Now listen. You are reading about a Russian count under house arrest, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you think it is just about a man in a hotel?”

“Is it not?”

She leaned back. “No. It is about dignity under pressure. It is about adaptation. It is about how power behaves when it loses the right to be obvious. It is about being reduced and still remaining yourself. The Bolsheviks would have appreciated the irony, even if they would have ruined the furniture.”

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Then she said, “What? Did you think history only lives in thick textbooks and boring lectures? History is everywhere. In your building lifts. In your gated communities. In your family dinners. In the way people lock doors against one another. In the way a country thinks it is new while carrying old habits in a new shirt.”

I did not know what to say, so I said the only honest thing. “Madam, I think you are a very dangerous person.”

“Why?”

“Because now I will not be able to just deliver food and go.”

She smiled with a kind of satisfaction. “Good. Then stay curious.”

I stayed exactly seven minutes longer than I should have. Then I had to rush. She packed the leftover fish curry into a small steel container and said I should bring the container back whenever I was in the building. I tried refusing, but she was a professor, and professors have a way of making refusal feel like poor grammar.

Before I left, she asked, “What is your name, really?”

“Arjun.”

“No, I mean your serious name.”

“That is my serious name.”

She nodded. “Fine. Arjun. Come back when you are free. Not as a delivery boy. As a reader.”

I left that flat with a full stomach, a confused brain, and the absurd feeling that I had just stepped out of a secret classroom.

The next day I told my friend Bikash at the restaurant about it. He laughed so hard he almost dropped a stack of boxes.

“Arjun, you got adopted by a rich grandmother?”

“Not adopted,” I said. “Educated.”

“Same thing.”

“No, not same thing. One gives you money. One gives you history.”

He made a face. “History cannot fill stomach.”

I said, “Maybe not. But it can change the way you digest life.”

He stared at me. “Who are you and what did that old lady do to you?”

I did not have an answer.

But I did go back.

Not immediately in a dramatic way. I did not turn up with flowers or a violin or any nonsense from movies. I simply found myself taking orders in that area more often than chance should reasonably allow. And every time I passed through her complex, I felt like I had entered a building with a secret floor. Sometimes I would deliver to someone else in the same building, and if I had even ten spare minutes, I would call her flat.

The first time I returned, she opened the door before I could ring.

“You came late,” she said.

“I came whenever I got a chance, madam.”

“Always late,” she corrected, and then stepped aside. “Come in. I have tea.”

That became the pattern.

I would bring the food. She would serve tea. I would sit on the sofa with my helmet in my lap like a schoolboy in trouble. She would ask me what I was reading, what nonsense the city had produced today, which customer had shouted, which customer had tipped, which customer had lied about not receiving the food even while holding the food packet in their own hand. I would tell her stories, and she would laugh in a dry, elegant way, often at the exact moment where I least expected her to.

She had a sharp tongue, but never a cruel one. That mattered. She could puncture vanity without puncturing the person.

Once I told her about a man who had ordered biryani and insisted the delivery boy should “come up fast” because he was hungry. When I reached the flat, the same man made me wait twelve minutes because he was on the phone discussing stock market tips like a failed prophet.

Mrs. Banerjee listened and said, “People who say ‘come fast’ are often people whose own minds have no pace.”

I laughed. “Madam, that is so accurate it should be illegal.”

She took a sip of tea. “No. It should be taught in schools.”

Another time I told her about the boy outside the lobby, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who had ordered chicken curry while his parents were away. He stood in the parking area, opened the packet, looked around like a thief with a conscience, and started eating quickly. When I asked him if he wanted a spoon, he said, “No sir, they are vegetarian at home.”

I thought that was funny. “Imagine, madam, a household where chicken is more secret than politics.”

She raised an eyebrow. “In many households, chicken is less dangerous than politics.”

That became one of her favourite lines.

I once told her about the husband who had ordered dinner while standing near the gate because his wife would not open the door. He kept calling her. She kept not answering. He looked at me with the face of a man whose marriage had entered a managerial crisis and said, “Brother, just wait.”

I waited.

He waited.

The food cooled.

Then the door finally opened from inside, not by his wife but by sheer exhaustion, and he took the packet as though accepting a verdict.

Mrs. Banerjee laughed so hard she had to put down her cup. “Excellent. Domestic history,” she said. “The Republic of the Home has its own constitution.”

I began to notice that every ordinary delivery seemed to her like evidence from a larger civilization. She had spent years teaching history, so she had the habit of connecting the small to the large, the private to the political, the trivial to the tragic. A broken lift became a lesson in infrastructure. A locked door became a lesson in trust. A spilled curry became a lesson in entropy, though she did not use that word unless she wanted to sound slightly smug.

One evening I found her glasses on the table beside a book on the Russian Revolution. Another book lay open beside it, and on top was my own battered copy of A Gentleman in Moscow, with a bookmark made from a bus ticket.

She pointed at it. “So. What is the count doing today?”

I answered, “He is being polite while the world is trying to reduce him.”

She nodded. “Good. And what are the Bolsheviks doing?”

“Ruining the furniture, as you said.”

“That is the proper summary. Few revolutions survive the committee stage without knocking over a chair.”

I laughed, then asked, “Madam, why do you like these old histories so much?”

She took a moment before answering. “Because people are always pretending the present is unique. It isn’t. Human beings repeat themselves with better technology. The costumes change; the habits do not.”

I considered this. “Then what is the use of learning history?”

She looked at me carefully, like a teacher pleased to be asked the right question.

“To become less foolish with your opinions,” she said. “To know that every loud certainty has ancestors. To see patterns before they become disasters. And perhaps, if one is lucky, to become kinder. History should make you humble.”

That word stayed with me too: humble.

Most people do not like being humble. Humility has no shine. It does not photograph well. It cannot be put on a motivational poster. But sitting in her room with tea cooling beside us, I began to understand that humility was not about lowering yourself. It was about seeing clearly how small you are inside a much larger story, and not feeling insulted by that fact.

I kept coming.

Sometimes I brought the wrong book on purpose just to hear her complain.

Once I brought a cheap crime novel with a dramatic title because I had run out of reading material and the paan shop near my stand sold only three kinds of literature: magazines, detective paperbacks, and those spiritual calendars where God appears more productive than everyone else.

Mrs. Banerjee saw the cover and said, “This looks like it was written during a power cut.”

I said, “Madam, not all books can be Soviet-era railway carriages.”

“True. Some are worse.”

Then she made me tea and described, with great amusement, how many bad novels borrow the language of seriousness and deliver a fever dream instead. Her criticism was so precise that I began respecting even the books she disliked, because she could explain why something failed with the elegance of a surgeon.

One rainy evening, while thunder rolled over the city and my raincoat smelled like wet plastic and regret, I arrived with a bag of food and found her staring out the window. She looked more fragile than usual, though not weak. There is a difference. Fragility is a kind of tenderness the world can see; weakness is what the world assumes without permission.

She said, “Sit.”

I sat.

She did not speak for a minute. Then she said, “When I was young, I taught students who believed history was dead. They thought they were modern, and because of that they thought they were free from the past. It was a very foolish age. Perhaps every age feels that way.”

I asked, “Are students still foolish?”

“Of course,” she said. “The only difference is that now they have better phones.”

That made her laugh, and then me laugh, and the room became lighter.

Then she asked, “Do you know what Bolshevism was?”

“Something to do with Lenin and revolution and people wearing serious faces?”

“Very crude, but not useless,” she said. “It was a political movement, yes, but also a way of imagining history as something that could be forced into a new shape. The tragedy is that history is not clay. It is more like an old stubborn tree. You can cut branches, but the roots stay clever.”

I said, “That sounds like many families I know.”

“It is exactly like many families you know.”

By then I had started bringing her small things that were not part of any delivery. A book note. A newspaper clipping. A packet of roasted peanuts. Once, because she had complained that the city had forgotten how to make proper toast, I brought bread from a bakery I trusted and she made a whole speech about how such bread deserved a medal.

In return she gave me books, but not the kind people give to show off. She gave me the kind that comes with underlining, margin notes, and time. Sometimes she would hand me a page marked with a pencil line and say, “Read this. If you disagree, come back with evidence.”

No one had ever asked me to disagree with evidence before. I found it thrilling.

My friends at work began to notice that I had become different.

“You are smiling too much,” said Bikash. “This is suspicious.”

I told him about the professor.

He shook his head. “Arjun, be careful. Rich old people are either kind or dangerous.”

“She is both,” I said.

“Then definitely be careful.”

But I was not afraid. I felt, rather, that I had stumbled into a rare and harmless miracle. In a city where most connections are transactional, here was someone who had no practical reason to care about me and yet did. She did not ask me for favours, money, status, or gratitude. She asked for thought. That was a bigger demand than all the rest.

One evening I mentioned that I was reading a little faster because I wanted to finish books before they became due on the app of life, which is to say before responsibilities ate my time.

She said, “That is what young people do. They imagine life is a race. It is not. It is a reading room. You must choose what to sit with.”

I laughed. “Madam, you make everything sound philosophical.”

“It is philosophical. You are just too used to hearing nonsense in a casual voice.”

She had me there.

The change in me was gradual and obvious at the same time. I still delivered food, still chased addresses, still dodged traffic, still dealt with the random theatre of the city. But now I carried another life inside the same routine. On some nights, while waiting for an order to be assigned, I would think about a Russian hotel, a revolution, a professor’s note in the margin, the way a person remains themselves while the world changes shape around them. On other nights, while standing outside a gate with someone’s dinner in my hand, I would look at the locked doors and remember her saying that the republic of the home has its own constitution.

And slowly, I began to read differently. Not just to finish books, but to hear them. 

Turbine in the snow

***

# Turbines in the Snow: 

My First Hydro Project and the Harrowing Nights of Rammam Every engineer remembers their first hydro project. It is the crucible where theoretical knowledge meets the raw, unforgiving reality of nature. For me, that crucible was the Rammam 4 x 12 MW hydro project. I became involved with Rammam in November 1994, stepping into a project that was already steeped in history. 

While the Rammam site itself held a proud legacy—the very first unit of the historic plant having been commissioned way back in 1995–96—the equipment for this specific 4 x 12 MW expansion was relatively new. The heavy electrical machinery had been supplied from Bhopal just two to three years prior.

 My task in the mid-90s was to oversee the complete erection and commissioning of this equipment, transforming it from stored components into a fully functional powerhouse. Because the site was located in a deep, remote gorge, I established my basecamp in Darjeeling, about 70 kilometers away. 

While Darjeeling offered the charm of misty tea gardens and the majestic silhouette of the Himalayas, my mind was almost always focused on the roaring waters and the erection work at Rammam. 

I would make the arduous 70-kilometer journey to the site nearly every two months to oversee the progress. Usually, I made these trips alone, but in December 1995, I decided to break the routine. I took my wife, Madhuri, along with me. I wanted her to see the magnificent scale of the project and experience the unique beauty of the Himalayan winter. It was a decision that would result in one of the most memorable—and terrifying—journeys of my life.

The drive up to the site was breathtaking. As we ascended toward Dhotrey, crossing an altitude of more than 8,000 feet, the landscape transformed. The crisp winter air gave way to a heavy, steady snowfall. By the time we reached the powerhouse, the world outside was a pristine, silent blanket of white. Inside the powerhouse, however, it was a hive of activity. We spent a few hours walking the floor, the hum of the machinery and the clatter of erection work vibrating through the soles of our shoes. I sat down with my team of engineers, poring over blueprints and discussing the intricate details of the commissioning program. There is a unique camaraderie forged in remote powerhouses, surrounded by the sheer scale of the machinery and the mountains. 

 By late afternoon, the technical discussions wrapped up, and we headed to the site guest house. Kujur, our indefatigable and deeply hospitable site in-charge, had organized a wonderful, warming dinner for us. We shared stories, laughed, and enjoyed the meal, completely insulated from the harsh elements outside. But as the clock struck 8:00 PM and we finished our dinner, the reality of our situation set in. It was time to drive back to Darjeeling. Stepping out of the guest house, the romanticism of the snow vanished. It was pitch dark. The temperature had plummeted, and the road ahead was a treacherous ribbon of snow-covered tarmac clinging to the edge of the mountain. I have traveled many difficult roads in my career, but I have never made such an arduous journey as the drive back from Rammam that night. As our jeep began the descent, the conditions deteriorated rapidly. The snow had compacted into ice, and the steep, winding hilly road offered zero margin for error. Every few minutes, the jeep would lose its grip and skid violently toward the edge. I could feel the rear of the vehicle swing out, the tires scrabbling uselessly against the ice before catching just enough traction to pull us back from the abyss. The visibility was more or less zero. The headlights merely illuminated a swirling vortex of snowflakes, offering no clue about the sharp hairpin bends or the sheer drops just inches from our tires. Inside the cabin, the silence was deafening. Madhuri sat stoically, her hands gripping the seat.  Internally, my heart was hammering against my ribs. In those moments, time seems to slow down. Every skid felt like an eternity. I realized with absolute clarity that anything could have happened. A slight miscalculation, a patch of black ice hidden beneath the snow, or a momentary lapse in concentration, and the jeep would have tumbled into the unfathomable darkness of the gorge below. We were entirely at the mercy of the mountain and the skill of the driver. 

 When we finally saw the distant, faint lights of Kurseong, a profound wave of relief washed over me. Our driver pulled the jeep to a stop, turned off the engine, and I let out a breath I felt I had been holding for hours. Darjeeling was another one hour drive in the incessant rain. Looking back, the Rammam 4 x 12 MW project remains a cornerstone of my career. It taught me the intricacies of hydro-mechanical erection and commissioning, and the importance of bringing newly supplied equipment to life in challenging terrains. But more than the technical lessons, it taught me about resilience. It taught me about the dedication of men like Kujur, who keep the operations running in the most remote corners of the country. And it taught me to maintain a deep, abiding respect for the Himalayas—a place of breathtaking beauty, but one that demands your absolute vigilance. To this day, often I am transported back to that pitch-dark night in December 1995,  the skidding jeep through the blinding snow,the expert driver just trying to get me and wife  safely home.