Trip planning corrected me. Auschwitz is in present-day Poland. The name is German – a linguistic ghost of the occupation – which is why it hadn’t registered in my head that this wasn’t “in Germany”. The town is Oświęcim in Polish. Under German occupation, the Nazis used the German name, and that is the name that stuck to the camp in history. Today the town uses its Polish name, while the memorial/museum keeps “Auschwitz” – partly because it is historically accurate, and partly because a living town shouldn’t have to share its everyday name with a concentration camp.

Why these areas?

Because that’s where the Jews were.

Not always. But by the time modern Europe decided to fully unleash its worst self, European Jewry was heavily concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans. That concentration itself was the outcome of centuries of marginalisation and expulsion in Western Europe.

The Holocaust was horrible and shameful. If stronger words exist, they should be used. No qualifiers need to be added there.

Auschwitz is a tourist destination now. The attempts to maintain the dignity of the place can sometimes feel performative. And yet – the horror still comes through. It did for me. The sheer scale of it, the bureaucratic neatness of it, the fact that it was an engineered system and not a burst of chaos. And when you combine Auschwitz with walking tours in places like Kraków that explain the Jewish predicament-how precarious and conditional Jewish life was made to be-you begin to feel that the word “predicament” is another one that understates the entire thing.

And then, in the 21st century, the problem has done a strange about-turn.

The middle of the 20th century gave us the nation-state of Israel – and sold it so well to the rest of us.

I remember hearing praise of Israel and Jewish resilience growing up. How Jews preserved the memory of their homeland through religion and ritual. How a tiny, young nation defeated the combined army of Arab countries (six or seven or whatever the number is in the telling) to protect its right to exist.

And I’ll admit it: that story hits emotional buttons that many Indians are primed to respond to. It resonates with the eternalism many Hindus want to believe about themselves – this idea of civilisational and religious continuity, a long memory, a sacred geography. And then there’s the cherry on top: the insinuation that Jews and Israel are also plagued by the intransigence of Muslims.

It’s a story designed to land. And it lands.

But what really happened? And how much of it is praiseworthy?

As with any group of people, if you trace history, the story gets complicated fast.

Jews have, through their religion, managed to retain a long-term memory of trauma and persecution and turned it into an identity. In all likelihood, many of the incidents they remember are historical.

But two things can be true at the same time.

One: ancient Near Eastern polities – like every place in the world – had rivalries, wars, empire-building, and the misery of commoners that comes with it. Israelites being exiled? That was the fate of many peoples. An empire overrunning a smaller polity like the Kingdom of Israel or Judea? Again, not unique.

Two: somewhere in that churn, Jews developed a distinct coping mechanism – and it was radical in its time: exclusive monotheism.

To understand how radical this was, you have to look at the world they lived in. Ancient polytheism was fluid. Different cities had different patron deities, but that didn’t make other gods “false.” A traveler could bow to a local god, or a conqueror could co-opt a local temple, without any existential contradiction. “Religions” could stack and merge. 

Judaism did something else. It claimed that their miseries were the direct result of not praying exclusively to their one true God. This “something else” created a culture of exclusivity that made assimilation – religious, civic, and imperial- nearly impossible. While this is exactly what preserved their identity for millennia, it also put them on a collision course with the empires of the time.

We often think of Greeks and pre-Christian Romans as “persecutors,” but they weren’t religiously intolerant in the way we understand the word today. They were pagans; they were happy to add new gods to the shelf. So why the conflict?

Because for an empire, religion is a tool of social engineering. Under Roman rule, participating in the “imperial cult” – honoring the Emperor through specific rituals – wasn’t just a religious act; it was a civic duty. It was a litmus test for political loyalty.

To the Roman mind, refusing to perform these rituals wasn’t a private theological preference – it was high treason. 

This is where the braiding of political and religious persecution began. The Roman Empire was brutally pragmatic: any people who rebelled or resisted their authority were punished with equal ruthlessness, regardless of who they were. It was a tool for maintaining the machinery of state.

But in the case of the Jews, that resistance was fundamentally tied to their faith. They weren’t being punished simply for having a different God, but because their exclusive monotheism forbade them from participating in the political rituals that held the empire together. Their faith could not be reconciled with “imperial honor.” What the Romans saw as a punishment for disobedience – a standard requirement for any conquered subject – the Jews saw as an existential violation of their covenant.

Once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the old political friction was weaponized by a deep theological grievance. Because Christianity claimed to be the true fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, the very existence of Jews-who rejected Jesus as the Messiah-became a direct challenge to the Church’s legitimacy. This wasn’t just a difference of opinion; it became a doctrine of “deicide,” the toxic accusation that Jews were collectively responsible for killing Christ. 

Now, the political and theological issues braided together and soaked into the social fabric: even a person with no political knowledge and no theological sophistication learned that “Jews are suspicious” because they were “enemies of God.” Since then, the European history of Christian antisemitism has become its own dark universe.

But not all of Europe was the same. Central and Eastern European polities were not egalitarian in any modern sense, but Jews did find relatively safer havens there in certain periods. The theocratic Islamic Ottoman empire also respected “people of the book”, and hence Jews found a home in the Balkans too. That’s how the Jewish population came to be centered in Central/Eastern/Balkan Europe before the Holocaust.

Then the 19th and 20th centuries arrive, and with them the rise of nationalism.

I have often questioned the vague definitions of “nations” in Europe – how elastic they are, how opportunistic they are – but almost everyone in Europe, including Jews themselves, did treat Jews as a separate nation.

In the Jewish case, though, the nation-to-nation-state question took a non-European turn.

Zionism arose which decided that the nation’s homeland should be its Biblical homeland: Palestine.

And here is where my disbelief hardens into anger: Britain agreed to support this idea in 1917, long before the Holocaust had made Europe incapable of demanding anything reasonable from itself. The Balfour Declaration expressed support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, while also saying the rights of existing non-Jewish communities should not be prejudiced. That second half was never treated as a real constraint with real enforcement – more like a veneer of moral correctness, a disclaimer that made the first half sound less brutal than it actually was.

Jews had lived in Europe for centuries – perhaps millennia. By any common-sense standard, they were Europeans. They spoke European languages. Hebrew was no longer a spoken language (it was revived as a spoken language only in the 20th century by the state of Israel). The most “Jewish” language of Europe – Yiddish – is actually a Germanic language. They ate European food (sans the religious restrictions) and they were a part of the European economic and social fabric. That their nation-state should be in Palestine should have sounded like one of Trump’s “beautiful projects” sounds today: comical, a joke.

But apparently not.

Why not? I can think of possibilities, none flattering:

• Maybe antisemitic Christian Europe found a Biblical-looking way of getting rid of Jews without having to look itself in the mirror.
• Maybe there were geopolitical incentives – control, influence, strategic footholds – that became clearer later in the 20th century and have only sharpened since.

What makes me almost laugh – except it isn’t funny – is how easily Zionism could be made to sound “natural” and even noble, because it could borrow the authority of the Bible. Not Judaism’s Bible as lived religion so much as the Bible as Europe’s moral and cultural furniture – because Christianity (not Judaism) had saturated Europe for centuries, and then exported itself to the United States too. So Christianity plays this obscene double role: it persecutes Jews across Europe for generations, makes Jewish life conditional and humiliating, and then turns around and becomes a vehicle for extravagant support to Zionism – because Bible, because “return,” because prophecy, because a story that was already familiar to Christian ears. The same civilisational engine that helped make Jews unsafe in Europe also helped make “sending them elsewhere” feel righteous.

In 1947, the UN adopted a plan recommending partition into an Arab and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem under a special international regime. Israel declared independence in 1948.

The Arab state envisioned by that plan never came into being.

Since then, on reading the history, watching how the facts stack – Israel reads as a colonisation project: European Jews colonising the land, backed by European powers and the USA, justified by Biblical memory, and – most jarringly  – born in a time when much of the world was aggressively, even triumphantly, moving towards decolonisation. And a quarter of the way into the 21st century, this isn’t just history – it’s a continuing policy. Jewish settlement and control keep expanding in Palestine.

The Palestinian Arabs were treated as if they never existed-or as if they were interlopers.

Were they?

No. They have lived on that land for a very long time. “Arab” in Palestine is largely language and cultural history: Arabic and Islam became dominant over time, but that doesn’t mean that it was a story of the population being replaced wholesale by migrants from the Arabian Peninsula. Genetic studies largely support this shared ancestry. Jewish populations retain substantial Levantine/Eastern Mediterranean roots, and Palestinians share those same deep roots. Over the centuries, Palestinians have had later admixture from other populations. But so have European Jews with admixture from European populations, perhaps more than Palestinians. And Palestinians lived in that land. European Jews lived in Europe. So, come 20th century, and the world treating Palestine as the natural homeland for Jews, while making Palestinians stateless and voiceless – it is such a slap on the idea that humans are civilized, or justice-minded, that writing this makes my blood boil. Reading the history sends me into a whirl of depression.

Jews were wronged for centuries. There is no denying that.

But that should have been righted in the land they actually inhabited: Europe. If justice had to cost someone something, it should have cost those who were the wrongdoers: Europeans.

What had Palestinians done to Jews? Islam was not a traditional enemy of the Jews either. How did Palestinians become the villain in this Jewish story?

But don’t the Israelis deserve a reward for their bravery? What about those stories of a tiny, new Israel fending off powerful Arab neighbours?

Let’s take a deep breath. David and Goliath roles are different in reality from the myth.

Britain was promoting and facilitating Jewish migration and institution-building in Mandatory Palestine after 1917, and the Jewish community developed state-like structures well before 1948. Meanwhile, in 1948 the surrounding Arab states were newly independent, politically unstable, and were hardly the unified, trained, modern military threat the myth suggests.

The “Arab side” was not even a single moral actor. They had their own territorial aspirations. Palestinian statehood was not on their agenda. Jordan is the clearest example: Jordan controlled and then annexed the West Bank and held it until Israel occupied it in the 1967 war. Regional self-interest was always in play, often at Palestinian expense. Most of these Arab states were also beholden to their past colonial, European masters, Israel’s supporters.

Israel didn’t defeat Arabs with some sort of moral power, for which it needs to be rewarded. It was the military and geopolitical power of Britain, Europe, and later the USA. Arab countries were not standing up for Palestine. They were fighting for their own survival and expansion.

So, what are we to do now? If one were to ask for a solution today: just like supplanting Jews in Palestine should never have been considered in the 20th century, supplanting Israelis somewhere else should not be considered now, even by those who believe Israel’s creation was a historic mistake. Because whatever the origin story was, that is their home now.

But a two-state solution – creating a fully sovereign Palestinian state, and compensating Palestinians for what has been taken from them – is the minimum that resembles justice.

I know. Even this minimum sounds like helpless fantasy.

And the moral contortions of the world make it worse. Holocaust guilt gets metabolised into a special exemption allowing Israelis to inflict the very brands of dehumanization and dispossession that were once used against them. Arab nations are too absorbed in their own crises to stand up effectively for Palestinians. Palestinians still don’t have a voice.

Hamas exists, and Hamas has committed atrocities. But it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that Hamas emerged from some vacuum of evil rather than decades of dispossession, occupation, blockade, humiliation, and hopelessness of Palestinians.  “Terrorism” whether of PLO in the past or of Hamas today, becomes a convenient strawman to discredit Palestinian suffering as a whole, while Israel continues to be painted as the default victim.

And in that mess – this loop of trauma weaponised into supremacy, memory turned into entitlement – there is something profoundly dishonouring to Holocaust victims.

What was “Never Again” supposed to mean?

“Never Again” for us-because we will become them, and do it to someone else?

Was the world always this morally bankrupt? And will it always be?

(Greece, Egypt, and Rome have all vanished from the world,
But our name and mark remain, still enduring.)

Iqbal was flexing India here. Empires everywhere else – poetically represented by Greece, Egypt, and Rome – have risen and fallen, their monuments scattered to dust, yet India’s civilization continues, unbroken.

It’s a powerful claim. But is it true? Have Greece, Egypt, and Rome really “vanished,” while we alone endure?

Those empires and polities have indeed vanished. The Greek city-states that nurtured philosophy and democracy no longer exist. Alexander’s empire disintegrated within years of his death. The Roman Republic fell to Caesar’s dictatorship, and the Roman Empire itself was overrun in the West by Germanic tribes, then extinguished in the East by the Ottomans. Ancient Egypt’s dynasties were absorbed first by Greeks, then Romans, then Arabs and Ottomans, and finally by the European colonial powers.

But if we judge survival by political continuity, India fares no better. The Indus Valley civilization, with whatever urban polities it had, vanished. The Vedic polities didn’t even leave ruins. The Mauryan and Gupta empires are long gone. So are the Cholas, Satavahanas, Mughals, and the British Raj. Polities are constantly replaced, constantly dying.

So, political survival is not what can support this claim of India eduring. Perhaps it is the survival of language. But here too, the story resists neatness. Greek is still spoken; the spoken language has evolved, but its alphabet hasn’t changed since antiquity. Latin died as a living tongue but is still understood and studied. It also lives on in its descendants – Italian, French, Spanish – and in the vocabulary of law, medicine, church, and scholarship. Ancient Egyptian morphed and ultimately was replaced by Arabic in most of Egypt, but it survived in its descendant Coptic, still preserved in the liturgy of Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church. Thanks to that survival, scholars managed to decipher the ancient Egyptian language and its form of writing – the hieroglyphs.

India’s story is similar. Sanskrit’s fate mirrors Latin’s – once a living language of ritual and intellect, now largely scholarly. Its descendants – many North Indian languages – thrive. Yet the later Sanskrit of the puranas was already distinct from Vedic Sanskrit. Living languages flow and mutate; only dead ones stay still. Like Egyptian hieroglyphs, we had also forgotten the Mauryan Brahmi script, famously used for Ashokan inscriptions across the subcontinent. Like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it had to be painstakingly deciphered in modern times – by James Prinsep in 1837 – restoring a lost connection to our ancient voices.

So, the fate of the languages is not different. Then perhaps culture is what makes a difference. Does it, though?

Every culture mutates, borrows, forgets. So, if Indians believe that we have survived in a way that Greece, Rome, and Egypt haven’t, perhaps the reason lies in religion—specifically, the one we call Hinduism. There are two beliefs that lead people to think this way.

(1) That because of conversion to Christianity or Islam, Greece, Rome, and Egypt became completely disconnected from their past; and
(2) That Hinduism itself is unchanged since antiquity, a direct continuation of Vedic religion.

Neither holds up.

All societies remember and forget selectively. And in the modern age, all have rediscovered parts of what they once lost. Greece continued to remember its classical philosophy through Byzantine times. Even in Western Europe, it was rediscovered initially through Arabic translations and then through the inflow of scholars to the West after the fall of Constantinople. Rome’s heirs remembered law and empire through the Catholic Church and Latin scholarship, and much that was forgotten was later rediscovered during the Renaissance. Christianity absorbed many pagan festivals; the date of Christmas and many Easter traditions go back to those earlier layers. Existing folktales were adapted for Christianity in many countries all over Europe, and they survive till now. Local deities were transformed into patron saints of cities and professions.

Egypt, transformed by Christianity and later Islam, carried forward strands of its ancient world in local practices such as the spring festival of Sham el-Nessim, Nile-centered rites like Wafaa el-Nil, rituals around birth and mourning, and much else in the day-to-day practice of religion and culture.

So, Greece, Rome, and Egypt remembered a lot despite Christianity and Islam. At the same time, despite some sort of continuity since Vedic ages, India’s religious memory has many gaps. Vedic sacrifices – animal offerings, fire-altars – either disappeared or survive only as faint symbolic traces. The identity of the sacred soma has been completely forgotten. Early Rigvedic gods like Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and the Ashwins lost their pride of place as the concept of the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh arose. Durga, Parvati, and Kali are nothing like Vedic goddesses such as Usha. Asceticism had no place in the Vedas; those practices came much later. Sects like the Pashupatas, Kapalikas, and the Ajivikas arrived and then faded from practice. The materialist writings of Charvaka are practically lost. By the time modern archaeology arrived, much of Buddhist India had slipped from everyday memory. Sanchi, Sarnath, Ajanta, and Nalanda had to be excavated back into view. But Buddhism had left its mark on Hinduism in practices some consider to have been “sanatana” – the temples so central to Hinduism today, and the vegetarianism of the upper castes. Neither is Vedic; neither is “sanatana.” We remembered, forgot, and rediscovered – just like everyone else. The notion of an unchanging “Sanatana Dharma” is a recent invention – an attempt to fix fluid traditions into a single, supposedly timeless mould. But archaeology, linguistics, and genetics tell a far messier story.

So, have Greece, Egypt, and Rome “vanished”? No more than India has. Their gods and myths, languages and philosophies, and cultures and practices survive in new guises. We all live amid the ruins of older selves, sometimes forgetting, sometimes rebuilding. The real story, whether of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, or of India, is not of vanishing or of eternal survival, but of continual reinvention.

When Iqbal wrote those lines, colonialism had made Europe’s dominance feel both cultural and moral. The colonizers framed their power as the natural triumph of “civilization.” Anti-colonial thinkers like Iqbal needed to answer that arrogance with pride. His verse was defiance: the claim that India’s spirit had outlasted every conqueror. It was important to make that point. The times called for rousing poetry, not scholarly footnotes.

But today, we no longer need to prove that we’ve survived “better” than others. The West’s old hierarchies of civilization have collapsed. Greece, Egypt, Rome, India – all are heirs of the same human impulses. Our task now isn’t to boast of endurance, but to recognize continuity in change, and kinship in the shared experience of being human.

The route focuses almost entirely on the pre‑WWII period.

This matters because there is a break in the identity of people we would today call Andamanese around the time of WWII. Those who settled before 1942 call themselves “local‑born” or simply “locals.” The flag‑bearers of this group are the so‑called “convict‑descendants,” descendants of people who settled when it was a British penal colony, starting in 1858. For a small number of them, their ancestors may not have been convicts; some may have been part of the administration or may have run businesses needed to sustain the colony. Also included are other settlers brought later by the British, including the Karens from Burma, the Ranchi people from Chotanagpur (the name “Ranchi” comes from the city itself), and the Bhantu from Uttar Pradesh (labelled a “criminal tribe” under British administration). These groups were brought to address labour shortages and were employed in timber felling, plantation and agricultural work.

One thing that distinguishes this group from post‑Independence settlers—and underpins their shared “local‑born” identity—is that they lived through WWII and the Japanese occupation. Many see themselves as the original Andamanese, and their generational experience bears that out.

But there is another tour we didn’t take. An increasingly popular one goes to the Limestone Cave on Baratang Island. It’s a tiring trip: a long drive, waits at check posts, a boat ride, and then some trekking—all for a cave that, by most accounts, isn’t particularly spectacular. We chose not to plan for it and, honestly, couldn’t see the point—until a bit later. The check posts are there because the road cuts through protected Jarawa territory. The Jarawa are one of the Indigenous tribes of the islands, present perhaps for 30,000 years, maybe earlier. Along that road, tourists might glimpse Jarawa people who come close to the road, walk along it, or cross it. In the 21st century, turning other humans into a sightseeing attraction doesn’t fly. Baratang’s cave has, in practice, become a euphemistic alternative for that.

Apart from the Jarawa, there were at least ten other tribes with related but distinct languages and cultures in the Great Andaman archipelago before settlers arrived. Today, together, they number fewer than 100. Their way of life—and their cultural and linguistic distinctions—have largely disappeared. Many of those who survive also have settler ancestry. Assimilation into the mainstream hasn’t really happened though; they depend on government assistance for survival. They are now collectively known as the Great Andamanese.

The Great Andamanese came into contact with settlers early, and their numbers suffered greatly from power imbalances and, more importantly, from the diseases settlers brought. The Jarawa, on the other hand, shunned contact. Their relationship with the British and the settlers they brought—and even more with post‑Independence settlers who lived too close to their territories or encroached on them by clearing land for agriculture or plantations—remained hostile for the most part until the late 1990s. Since 1998, however, relations have turned more friendly. They still maintain their lifestyle, but they often visit settlements, trade, seek help—especially medical help—and some children attend schools established by the government for them. Will this limited‑contact isolation be maintained? Or will either side seek more contact in the future?

Another Indigenous Andamanese group are the Onge, who have managed to keep their distinctness a little better than the Great Andamanese tribes—but only just. Today they number fewer than 150 people, confined to two reserves on Little Andaman.

North Sentinel Island from the flight back to Bangalore

Then there are the people commonly referred to as the North Sentinelese. If the name sounds familiar, it may be because of the 2018 incident in which an American missionary, John Allen Chau, travelled to the island on a misguided mission to bring Jesus to this isolated tribe and was killed by them. They live on North Sentinel Island, in a status described as voluntary isolation. From British times through the early 2000s, attempts were made to establish friendly contact. Since then, the government has adopted a policy of leaving them be. It is now illegal to approach the island beyond a certain distance, which is probably for the best, given that contact has not gone well for most isolated tribes in the Andamans and elsewhere in the world.

The question, when we think about this population and the fate of some of them, is whether any mainstream definition of “original Andamanese” or “local” holds up. These islands were taken from Indigenous peoples by settlers, whenever they came. In settler logic, cultivating the land makes it yours. In Indigenous logic, that destroys the jungle. Yet we don’t have the intellectual luxury of condemning settlers outright. None of the Andamanese of today chose to settle here. Even their ancestors rarely had a sovereign choice. For most, settlement meant the loss of freedom, the loss of the home they had known, and the loss of extended family and society. This was true even for post‑Independence settlers, not just the original convicts. The most important group of post‑Independence settlers were Bengali refugees from East Bengal (Bangladesh). In their turn, each of these groups worked hard and did the best they could with the hand they were dealt.

The problem we face, in many walks of life, is the rise of large, powerful states that came with “civilisation”—states able to interfere in many things, but without the foresight to see which powers are best left unused. I suppose today’s decision to let the isolated tribes be is the best decision we can take. Spokespeople for “civilisation” question the morality of keeping them away from the fruits of modern life. But these populations can live well and flourish in the forests without clothing; they have immunity to malaria, and they do not suffer from lifestyle diseases. From all our past experience, forcing “civilisation” on them is hardly the right moral choice.

We spent our last morning at a small memorial called Balidan Vedi (translation: altar of sacrifice). It isn’t packaged for tourists. There’s no ticket counter, no audiovisual show, no gift shop selling old photographs. Just a modest structure, a plaque, a small museum with photographs and documents, and the quiet insistence of memory. The memorial structure commemorates 44 members of the INA and the Indian Independence League who were massacred at this site by the Japanese on 30 January 1944. The attached museum commemorates other islanders who suffered under the Japanese. The memorial exists because local families insisted it must. They pushed, fund-raised, petitioned, and argued so that their forebears’ fear and hunger and deaths during the war wouldn’t be forgotten. Balidan Vedi is not part of the official itinerary the way the Cellular Jail is. Guides don’t tell this story at the sunset sound-and-light shows. But the islands’ lived experience—not the national story—is recorded here.

Because here’s the uncomfortable reality: the Andamans were not “freed” from the British by Netaji; they were occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War—the only part of India to experience Japanese rule on the ground. The Japanese administration did in the Andamans what it did across other occupied territories in Asia: arrests, interrogations, fear as policy, scarcity as everyday life. People disappeared. People starved. People died. To be clear, no one is indicting Netaji who sought Japanese support in the hope of achieving India’s freedom by military means. He was there for only a day. Most agree he was unaware of the ground realities. He did not even live to shape our nationalist stories. Yet people suffered; that cannot be denied.

In the rest of Asia, this story is not shy. In Indonesia, for example, the country’s history openly acknowledges the ambivalence and the harm of the years of Japanese occupation—showing that “the enemy of my enemy” was no friend, but an occupier, often harsher than the colonial masters. The narrative there has room for contradiction: collaboration and resistance, hope and hunger, the complicated arithmetic of survival. In India, we rarely grant the Andamans that honesty. We don’t even agree on the word occupation. We prefer to tuck the islands into a different folder, the one labelled National Pride, and accessorize it with photos of the Cellular Jail, the INA flag, and a tidy caption about “first freed territory.” The men and women who suffered under Japanese rule—or resisted it—are almost invisible in both our official acknowledgements and our social memory.

Balidan Vedi resists that erasure. It doesn’t perform. It remembers. It says: the war was here, in our streets and on our jetties. It says: we lost people. It says: the map you drew from Delhi doesn’t match the ground we stood on.

Standing there, I kept thinking about local histories—how they grow, who tends them, how they are passed on. In many parts of Europe, local memory is cared for in small, steady ways. Towns maintain their own museums, plaques, anniversaries, local archives, and research projects. These places often appear on tourist itineraries, and local guides lead walking tours that tell their stories. The point is not to quarrel with the nation, but to keep what happened close and specific. It gives people another vocabulary of belonging: to a river, a factory, a street that once stood in rubble. Contradictions are easier to hold when they are recorded, named, acknowledged, and discussed.

We don’t cultivate that habit well in India. Our scale seduces us into smooth stories. We prefer a handful of national set-pieces that can be repeated from textbooks to television: a few dates, a few heroes, a few villains. It is efficient. It is also an erasure of lived realities. It sandpapers away the roughness of places and people that don’t fit—frontiers, islands, border towns, minorities, marginal communities that carried costs the rest of us only read about. When we suppress those edges, we don’t just do injustice to the past; we impoverish our understanding of the present.

I’m not arguing for a new national myth to replace the old one. I’m arguing for many small histories to sit beside the big one, tugging at its sleeve, refusing its shortcuts. I’m arguing for guides who are confident enough to say, “Yes, this was a site of British repression—and also, over there, people suffered under the Japanese.” I’m arguing for memorials like Balidan Vedi to be on the map, not because they flatter us, but precisely because they don’t.

If we let places like the Andamans speak in their own voice, the nation’s story doesn’t collapse. It grows up. It learns to hold dissonance without panic. And it learns, finally, to remember not just what is useful, but what is true.

Personal Life

Coding with AI

I’ve always known how to code. For years, I have done basic scripting in Python and SQL for work. I don’t write production code and I have never held a job as a programmer —because I don’t enjoy coding. Because I don’t enjoy coding, I didn’t use it for personal tasks—even when it promised to reduce tedium. So despite having ideas for small automations, I rarely followed through. It just didn’t feel worth the effort.

That’s changed. Now I code with abandon—for myself, thanks to AI.

File manipulation: I often need to merge or unmerge PDFs, convert PDFs or images to different formats, or reduce file sizes to meet absurdly specific upload requirements. Earlier, I had to open heavy tools like Adobe Acrobat or paid online converters—tools that were clunky for occasional use, sometimes required subscriptions, and made my already overloaded system groan. Now? I just ask Cursor to write a quick script for me. Suddenly, these once-tedious tasks feel lightweight and fully under my control.

Photo organization: We take a lot of photos during vacations, and over time they pile up into one big, unmanageable folder. I always wanted to organize them date-wise so they could be browsed more meaningfully—but manually sorting them was too tedious and error-prone. Windows Explorer isn’t designed for bulk file operations like that, and I never got around to writing a script myself.

Now, with AI-driven coding, it’s different. I just explain the requirement to Cursor, get a Python script, and run it. The photos are beautifully sorted without any manual dragging or renaming. It’s satisfying, efficient, and finally gets the job done right.

Reading and Writing with AI

Two very important personal tasks where AI has completely changed my experience are writing and reading.

Writing?  As the co-founder of a self-publishing platform, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for what a good editor can do for any piece of writing. A thoughtful editor doesn’t just fix grammar—they enhance clarity, flow, and readability, making your writing more impactful without taking away your voice.

But for personal writing—like a journal entry, a long message, or even a social media caption—getting a real editor is neither practical nor affordable. That’s where AI comes in. It has become my ever-available, never-tired editor who helps me polish language, smoothen flow, and elevate clarity (hello, em dashes! And also, all the emojis you see in this post!).

Importantly, I never ask AI to write these pieces from scratch—because the whole point is to convey my voice. But I use it freely and joyfully to edit and refine. It makes writing more satisfying and much more effective.

(There is a category of writing where I do let AI write more freely. More on that in the professional section.)

And reading—especially nonfiction—has transformed. I no longer open countless tabs to understand a reference. I just ask my AI companion, who never judges and always explains.

Organizing Life

Cataloging Our Personal Library: One of the most satisfying personal “projects” I’ve recently completed with AI is cataloging our 1500+ book personal library. Abhaya and I had merged our libraries almost two decades ago, and while I had once maintained a handwritten catalog, that system fell apart long ago. The sheer scale of the task—1500+ books—made it seem impossible to ever take up again.

But with AI, it finally became doable. I sent photos of book spines in small batches—because the tools still have their limits—and used ChatGPT and Gemini to identify the books. English titles were recognized fairly well; Hindi titles were a different story—ChatGPT struggled significantly with them, while Gemini performed a bit better in handling Hindi text. I switched between tools, made corrections manually, and even photographed individual books when the spines weren’t visible or readable. In under 10 hours of work spread-out across 3 days, the impossible task was done. I now have a complete, digital catalog of our home library.

This wasn’t just automation. It was a task that had emotional weight, logistical challenges, and zero commercial urgency. AI helped me get it done with delight.

Tracking Travel Expenses: Another task where AI stepped up was travel expense tracking. This used to be a nightmare—bookings made months in advance, some paid then and others paid later; expenses during the trip paid through a mix of cash, cards, and shared between Abhaya and me. In the past, it always felt too complicated to track properly.

This time, I just kept sending receipts, screenshots, and payment confirmations as photos to ChatGPT. It tracked and logged each expense as I went. Because these chat-based tools aren’t yet great at holding large amounts of structured data, I split the task across a few separate chats. By the end of the trip, I had four CSV files—which I could easily combine and analyze. The mess that used to haunt me post-trip was already sorted. And once again, AI turned something overwhelming into something achievable.

Professional Life

Writing with AI at Work

In personal writing, I use AI as an editor. But in professional contexts, I often let it take a first stab at writing too—especially for tasks like customer communication, where tone, empathy, and boundaries are crucial. These messages often come with impossible and contradictory asks: be empathetic but not apologetic, transparent but not risky, firm but respectful, informative but concise. Doing this well used to be exhausting—mentally switching between tact, policy, and tone.

Now, I just give AI this messy set of requirements, and it returns a structured draft that’s surprisingly usable. I still fill in real details, remove verbosity, and tweak things for alignment—but the hardest part of the emotional and tonal balancing act is handled before I even begin editing. And it works—because my voice is not the point here. In fact, most of the time, it’s important that I don’t sound like me. I need to sound like the organization: consistent, measured, professional. That’s why AI-generated writing shines in these cases.

But in documents like PRDs, I don’t rely on AI to do the core thinking. These documents need to capture what’s in my head—the real user flows, edge cases, and feature trade-offs. Starting with AI-generated text would only distract from that. But once that thinking is in place, I use AI to structure documents, fill in repetitive sections, or rewrite for clarity. It helps ensure my ideas are communicated clearly and efficiently.

I also use AI during the thinking process. I’ll ask it for edge cases I might have missed, or alternate ways to solve a specific flow problem. None of that goes into the PRD blindly—but it does enhance the thoroughness of my thinking, especially under time constraints.

And for things like product copy, FAQs, or help docs—where precision, clarity, and tone all matter—AI is an excellent collaborator. It helps me say things better, faster, and often with more consistency.

So yes, this is where I let AI write—not everything, and never thoughtlessly—but with trust, supervision, and results.

Programming with AI at Work

SQL Queries: Writing SQL queries for analysis is something I’ve done for years, but it’s often tedious and prone to minor, frustrating errors. AI has become a lifesaver here. I can describe what I need in plain language and get a solid query that does most of the work. I still review, revise, and test—because I know what I want, and I know how to validate whether it’s right—but AI cuts the time and effort dramatically.

Prototyping Ideas: Although people are going to claim that they are developing full products with AI and “vibe coding”, I don’t believe serious product building can be done that way. Real product development demands care, engineering effort, and rigour of all kinds—not just writing code. Someday all that may be possible with “vibe coding”, but not yet. However, when it comes to prototyping ideas, AI is incredibly useful.

Sometimes, I just want to test if a core assumption holds or see if a certain interaction makes sense before involving engineers or designers. In these situations, AI can help me quickly build out a rough flow, generate snippets of code, or simulate logic paths. It’s not the final product—but it’s enough to answer the question, “Will this work at all?” And for that, AI has been game-changing.

Overcoming Weaknesses at Work

One of the most empowering things about working with AI is how it helps me compensate for areas I’m not naturally strong in. For example, I’m great at defining what a UI needs to achieve and at evaluating whether a particular UI design meets those goals. But when it comes to imagining or creating UI layouts myself, I’ve always found that part hard.

Now, I can just describe the functionality and user goals to AI, and it often returns solid UI ideas or even mock components that I can evaluate and refine. This gives me a head start I never used to have.

So, what’s my takeaway?

AI is a tool—but a far more powerful one than most software tools we’ve used before.

You can use it to do things that are tedious, difficult, or out of your comfort zone. But it’s still a tool. You must know how to use it, and more importantly, how to judge its output. It won’t think or act rightly on your behalf—you have to do that part.

If you can bring that judgment, AI can genuinely make you feel like a superman or superwoman.

The macro impact of AI on jobs and the future of work, on society, learning and future of humankind, is a different story. But at an individual level—whether for side projects, personal goals, or daily work—AI is a supercharged tool. And learning to wield it well can be a game-changer.

One of the curious things about traveling in Greece was how people reacted to us being Indian tourists who actually live in India. Not UK. Not the US. Not “we’re-here-visiting-family-in-Switzerland-and-thought-we’d-pop-over.” No, we had made the trip from India.

Locals and other tourists alike seemed to react with surprise. “You’ve come a long way,” they’d say, with the kind of amazement usually reserved for astronauts or deep-sea divers. It was unexpected. We’ve been to other parts of Europe and never elicited that kind of reaction. Greece is supposed to be a popular destination for Indian tourists, isn’t it? What were we missing? Do Indian travellers stick to the islands and skip the historical sites? Anecdotally, the only other Indians we met on tours had flown in from the UK or mainland Europe. So maybe that explains it.

Hello, Non-Aligned Familiarity

North Macedonia, on the other hand, sees close to zero Indian tourists – but no one there seemed surprised to see us. It might have nothing to do with familiarity with Indians as tourists. It might instead be about familiarity with India as a country, which is the result of the post-WWII history of the place. North Macedonia was a part of Yugoslavia until the breakup of the federation in the 1990s. Yugoslavia was communist, but had broken free of Soviet influence early on, under Marshal Tito. And Tito was one of the founding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement along with Soekarno (Indonesia), Nasser (Egypt), and of course, Nehru! North Macedonia was happy as a part of Yugoslavia, and Tito remains much loved there. Because of that lingering affection and the strong ties with India during those times, India seems to mean something to the people even today. But economic impact of any Indian connection is totally missing now. Skopje doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant. More on that later.

Bulgaria: Racist or Rude?

Then there was Bulgaria. Our last stop. It took us a while to figure out whether we were facing racism or just universally bad service. My first instinct was to chalk it up to racism. But after reading up online, I found white tourists wondering if they were treated poorly by retail and hospitality workers because they were foreigners- and being reassured by Bulgarians that locals get the same treatment. It’s not them. It’s just… Bulgaria.  Trust me, we were not looking for fake American-style exuberance here – just the basic politeness and helpfulness that makes or breaks a customer’s experience. And that was mostly missing. It wasn’t even the kind of directness that’s common in some other countries and which some people may find rude. Here, you could get yelled at, for doing something completely normal as a customer, like browsing multiple items on display in a shop.

There is no reason to believe that Bulgarians, as people, are rude. To be fair, there were a few moments of good service. Our guide on our first tour was great – though we didn’t realize at the time that it would be an exception. In contrast, when we got excellent service at our final meal in Sofia, we were so happy that we tipped heavily. And when our host went out of their way to help us check in early and arrange a reliable taxi for our pre-dawn flight, I rushed to leave them a glowing review. Still, these were exceptions that proved the rule. When it comes to retail and hospitality, the Bulgarian way of working seems to leave politeness and customer service out of the equation entirely.

Since returning, I’ve been scrutinizing Indian restaurant bills to see whether a service charge is included. If it isn’t, I make sure to leave a tip. This, despite my strong dislike for the American tipping culture. But after Bulgaria, I’m not taking good service for granted – at least not for a while.

A First Time for Everything

What Rome, Naples, Paris, Prague, several Southeast Asian cities, and many Indian ones couldn’t do to us, Athens managed in two metro stops. I got pickpocketed.

It was our first day in Athens, and we had arrived from Crete. Now, we’re seasoned travellers – alert, aware, and mildly paranoid. That morning, after reaching Athens, I had even taken the card-case out of my backpack and kept it in my front waist pouch – because unlike Crete, Athens was crowded and a haven for pickpocketers. I was checking every two minutes to make sure it was still there. And yet, it was smoothly and efficiently taken. Just like that.

Thankfully, it had no cash, no IDs, no passport. Just cards, which I blocked quickly enough to avoid any misuse. The real losses were emotional: my beautiful Kompanero card-case, a leather one, recently bought after a long internal debate about whether I really needed a card-case separate from a wallet (I did); and my Priority Pass card, which meant no lounge access on our way back.

Could’ve been worse. Wasn’t. Another misadventure to tick off the list. Maybe the probability of it happening again has now gone down? (Is the probability of getting pickpocketed conditional on prior incidents of getting pickpocketed?)

Too Sweet to Handle

In my family, saying a sweet is “too sweet” is enough to get you mercilessly mocked. “It’s a sweet. What did you expect?”

But let me go on record here: Greek sweets are too sweet. Drenched in syrup, soaked to the soul. They look fascinating, are sold by weight, typically by the kilo, and you can mix and match different items within the same price bracket – just like in India – but after trying quite a few, we surrendered. A delightful exception: Kalitsounia, a Cretan cheese pastry that was just sweet enough, and addictively soft.

Sweets in North Macedonia were more restrained. Bulgaria’s desserts were… a blur. Not bad, but clearly not memorable enough to have survived in my sugar-soaked memory.

Food for Thought (and for Lunch)

Greek cuisine was a vegetarian’s delight – lots of vegetables, lots of cheese. And perhaps because of the prevalence of cheese, people were incredibly aware of the difference between vegetarian and vegan – thankfully, because I’m not ready to give up cheese. And if you couldn’t find anything else, falafel was always around, as was pizza.

Abhaya pursued every regional version of Bougatsa with dedication but managed to eat only two: the original Thessaloniki version and the sweet Cretan one. Greeks make all kinds of pies – filo pastries with different kinds of stuffing – and when we couldn’t manage a full meal, this was often the go-to option. For vegetarian fillings, there was always cheese, and when it came to greens, spinach seemed to reign supreme.

Koulouri was a simple baked bread ring, quite delightful in its crunchiness and sesame seed encrusting. It saw us through several early morning breakfast needs.

In other news, restaurants in Crete and, occasionally, in Athens, offered a complimentary dessert at the end of the meal. Once in Crete, even a post-meal drink was complimentary! The occasional disappointment, though, was when the complimentary dessert turned out to be suji halwa – admittedly exoticized with olive oil. And the servers, not knowing our deep Indian familiarity with halwa, would explain it to us in great detail, as if introducing a culinary novelty.

The national dish of North Macedonia is a vegetarian one – a sort of bean stew. The other speciality is Ohrid trout, named after its origin in Lake Ohrid, though it’s now strictly farmed since the lake is a protected area. We tried both, but neither was anything to write home about.

Italian food was unusually prominent in Bulgaria. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a pizza place. Not that we were complaining – it was often convenient, especially given our packed Bulgarian schedule and the occasional desire to avoid potentially rude treatment in yet another sit-down restaurant. That said, the sit-down Bulgarian meals we did manage to have were good too. I’ve already mentioned our last meal, where we even got very good service.

We did try Indian food in Thessaloniki and Sofia. Both were meh. The one in Sofia was slightly better. But Skopje remains special – it didn’t even have an Indian restaurant. The only capital city we have visited till now to have achieved this feat. During our trip to Ohrid in North Macedonia, our guide did point out an Indian restaurant that had opened only a few months earlier, and was probably the only one in the country.

All of these countries also produce wine, and most have their own distinctive liqueurs. Greece’s national drink is ouzo – an anise, or fennel, flavoured spirit. Other countries in the region have similar local drinks, sometimes with different names for similar flavours or similar names for entirely different things. The names one might come across include Raki, Rakija/Rakia, Tsipouro, Mastika, and so on. It’s beyond my ken to flesh out the nuances for you.

I shouldn’t miss mentioning this: Greece had heavenly orange juice – freshly squeezed and available everywhere. It was naturally sweet, and I must have gulped down litres of it.

And finally, coffee! While Greek coffee wasn’t our jam (we did try it once), we could easily get good cappuccino everywhere in Greece. But not after that. North Macedonia and Bulgaria were a disappointment when it came to our coffee runs. I remember having a similar experience in Poland, where even Starbucks would only offer a “blonde cappuccino.” Did communists not like strong coffee?

Other Ways of Learning

Sometimes life, and the next generation, conspire to humble you. When I go full history-nerd – talking about ancient sites, or fascinating civilizations, or legendary empires – my nephew often chimes in, “I know about that.” And how does he know? Video games.

This time, I was particularly pleased with myself for “discovering” that a country called North Macedonia existed while planning this trip. Apparently, I had swallowed Greek propaganda wholesale and assumed all of Macedonia was Greek. I was validated in this feeling of accomplishment by many people around me who confirmed that they hadn’t known the country existed until I told them. Turns out, my nephew already knew about the country. How? North Macedonia couldn’t possibly have featured in any video game – I was confident of that, even with my very limited understanding of the gaming world.  It turned out to be his other passion this time – football. He knows all the countries that play football, including their flags. So, that includes North Macedonia and its controversial flag. Who needs travel when you have Age of Empires and FIFA? Admittedly, playing video games and watching football would be cheaper too.

Then again, travel is still my game. At least until health, time, geopolitics, and finances allow. And right now, I am happy to announce, my nephew is traveling too!

If you were to sketch the history of the country that is today’s Greece in simplified, chronological chapters, it might look something like this: Minoan Civilization → Mycenaean Civilization → “Dark Age” → Classical Greece → Macedonian Empire (Philip II, Alexander, and successors) → Roman Conquest → Greekified Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire → Ottoman Empire → Greek Revolution → First Greek State → Balkan Wars and the Expanded Greek State → the 20th-century mess.

At this point, I want to talk about the early 19th century – not because the other chapters aren’t fascinating (they are), but because this is where the modern nation-state emerges and tells a very interesting story.

Let’s begin with a fact that seems simple but quickly turns slippery. Greece is not a Greek word. The people we call Greeks call themselves Hellenes. Their country is Hellas. The word Greece comes from the Latin Graecia.

But for many centuries before the modern nation-state emerged, the people who lived in what is now Greece – and much of the Balkans – did not think of themselves as Hellenes. The Eastern Roman Empire, what we now call the Byzantine Empire, lasted for nearly a thousand years after the fall of the West. What did the people of the Eastern Roman Empire, the only surviving Roman Empire, see themselves as? As Romans, of course. The empire’s capital was Constantinople, and its culture, language, and religion were Greek and Orthodox. Its people were Romans! The Roman identity was deeply associated with Orthodox Christianity, and they remained Romans even though the Roman Catholic Church had separated from the Eastern Orthodox Church as far back as 1054 AD.

This Roman identity didn’t disappear with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. The Ottoman Empire administered its vast and diverse population through a system of millets, dividing people not by geography, language or ethnicity, but by religion. All Orthodox Christians belonged to the Rum (Roman) millet. So, the people in European parts of the Ottoman Empire continued to think of themselves as Romioi, or Romans. Their land was Rumeli – the land of the Romans. The Patriarch of Constantinople led the Rum millet – as a spiritual and administrative head of all Orthodox Christians in the empire.

So where did Hellas and Hellenes fit into all this? To the average 18th-century Orthodox Christian living under the Ottomans, Hellenes were distant pagan ancestors – noble perhaps, but decidedly un-Christian. Their temples were ruins, their gods forgotten. They themselves were good Christians, and Romans.

Then came Western Europe, with its Enlightenment and its Romanticism. In the centuries before the Greek War of Independence, Europeans had rediscovered Classical Greece – and they were enamoured. For them, Greece meant Plato and Herodotus, not the liturgy of the Orthodox Church. When they looked at the Ottoman-occupied Christian lands, they didn’t see devout Romans. They saw a people waiting to become Greeks again – in the image of Socrates and Pericles. So, when they imagined a free Greek state, it was the rebirth of ancient Hellas they longed to see – not the continuation of an Orthodox Christian Romiosini.

Greek elites who were exposed to these Western ideas internalized this romantic vision. They began to see themselves as heirs of the ancient Hellenes. This new Greek nationalism claimed continuity from Classical Greece – a neat idea, if not a historically tidy one. The average person still saw themselves as Roman and Christian. So, the new Greek state that emerged in the 19th century would be shaped by this tension: were the Greeks descendants of ancient Hellenes, or heirs to Byzantine Romans? Sometimes these identities were integrated. Other times, they collided.

The Slavic Romans

Two other countries we visited along with Greece – Bulgaria and North Macedonia – also emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and have had particularly entangled relationships with Greek identity.

As mentioned earlier, under the Ottoman millet system, all Orthodox Christians – regardless of language – were grouped together. The liturgical and administrative language was Greek, and the Patriarch in Constantinople held sway. This gave Greek nationalism the opportunity to claim all these Christians. If all Christians were “Romans” and spoke Greek in church, could they not all be Greeks?

The problem was: many of them weren’t. Bulgarians spoke a Slavic language and had a distinct Slavic identity. Their nationalism had to fight not only Ottoman dominance, but also Greek claims on Christian leadership. The Greeks were the first among second-class subjects, dominant in the Orthodox millet and closely linked to Constantinople, both the spiritual and imperial capital.

Interestingly, the Bulgarian national church was the first to gain recognition as separate from the Patriarchate. The Greek national church had to wait longer. From the perspective of the Church in Constantinople, what would the Patriarchate be if not Greek? How could there be a Greek church separate from Constantinople?

The Slavic Greeks

If this already sounds confusing, let’s move to Macedonia for more.

Ancient Macedonia, of course, gave the world Alexander the Great. His empire stretched from Greece to India (Let Indian nationals not kill me for this. The boundaries of the current Indian nation were not under its influence, but the “Akhand Bharat” that nationalists aspire to, and the parts that were called India in those times, were part of the empire). While Macedonians certainly wanted to be considered Greeks, in their time, the “cultured” Greek city-states of the south often looked down on the Macedonians as half-barbaric. That did not stop Alexander from giving the world his “Greek empire”. Alexander’s conquests ushered in what is called the Hellenistic Age – a time when Africa, Europe, and Asia were all influenced by Greek culture. And in defiance of the snobbery of their classical-age ancestors, the 19th-century Greek nationalists did not hesitate to embrace Alexander as one of their own – and to claim Macedonia as an inseparable part of the Greek national story.

The problem was that by the time of modern nation-state formation, the region of Macedonia wasn’t overwhelmingly Greek. It was a patchwork of Slavic-speaking and Albanian communities, Christian and Muslim populations, and highly local identities. Bulgaria laid claim to it, citing medieval Bulgarian empires that had encompassed the region. Serbia wanted it too. And of course, Greece saw it as its historical birthright.

The fate of Macedonia was decided not by its inhabitants but by the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913. Greece got most of it. Serbia got what is today North Macedonia. Bulgaria got very little.

For both Greece and Bulgaria, there was no such thing as a distinct Macedonian ethnicity. Greece actively suppressed Slavic identity. Bulgaria insisted that Macedonians were simply Bulgarians. Serbia, which later became the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – and eventually Yugoslavia – didn’t acknowledge a separate Macedonian identity either.

However, after World War II, under Mashall Tito’s Socialist Yugoslavia, the idea of a distinct Macedonian nation and language was actively promoted. The People’s Republic of Macedonia became one of six republics in the Yugoslav federation. Bulgaria has long claimed that this was a geopolitical maneuver – an attempt to manufacture an anti-Bulgarian identity. And they may not be entirely wrong.

But history isn’t obliged to follow logic. Once an identity takes hold, it becomes real in its consequences. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1992, the Republic of Macedonia was a sovereign nation. Whatever its origins, Macedonian identity had arrived – and it wasn’t going back into hiding.

Greece wasn’t pleased. It refused to accept that a neighboring country could be called “Macedonia,” when Macedonia was also a Greek region and home to the legacy of Alexander. As a result, Greece blocked the country’s entry into NATO and the EU.

The standoff lasted decades. In 2018, a compromise was reached. The country officially renamed itself North Macedonia. It also agreed not to claim any ancient Macedonian heritage, and even had to revise its school textbooks accordingly. So, they cannot claim the legacy of Philip II or Alexander. A joint committee was formed to monitor “future misuse of ancient symbols.” Their national flag – originally inspired by an ancient Macedonian sun emblem – had already been changed in 1995.  Macedonians are not happy about it. In a strict historical sense, it may seem odd for Slavic Macedonians to claim the legacy of the Hellenic Macedonian Empire. The classical city-states of southern Greece may not have considered Alexander entirely Greek, but that certainly doesn’t make him Slavic – Slavic peoples came to the region more than a millennium after Alexander’s time. But then, who can claim an unbroken, uncontested legacy of anything ancient? The Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman layers that shaped modern Greece also altered its language, population, and culture. Why should those not dilute Greece’s own claim? From an outsider’s perspective, Greece’s treatment of North Macedonia feels less like historical safeguarding and more like geopolitical bullying.

North Macedonia’s other neighbors also made their presence felt. Albania supports its territorial integrity, but mostly because it wants a buffer between Serbia and Greece. In return, Albania has secured major concessions for the ethnic Albanian minority in North Macedonia. There’s some unease – especially among Christian Macedonians – about this growing influence. While there’s no official Albanian attempt to interfere in North Macedonia’s sovereignty, the fear of future meddling is very real to people who have an inherent distrust of Muslim Albanians in their country.

Greece may have lifted its veto. But now, Bulgaria is blocking North Macedonia’s EU accession. On one hand, it disputes the distinctiveness of Macedonian identity. On the other, it wants formal recognition of Bulgarians as a minority group in the country.

The Nationalistic Curse

Religion is inherently tied to national identity in this region, but not always in a clear-cut or straightforward way. In the making of the Greek nation, for example, Muslims came to be equated with Turks, and Orthodox Christians with Greeks. This equation ignored the complexities of identity – many Orthodox Christians had Slavic languages and identities and did not see themselves as Greek. Many Muslims were not ethnically Turks and could be Greek, Slavic, or Albanian. The religious divisions shaped nation-building across the region in disturbing ways.

In both Greece and Turkey, there were many instances of total annihilation of communities – sometimes through direct violence and massacres, at other times through mass displacements, and at least once through a “legal,” compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. Ethnically and linguistically Greek Muslims, because of some accident of family history which made Islam their religion, were not considered Greeks. Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians from Anatolia (Turkey) were uprooted and sent to Greece. They had to leave behind their ancestral homes, start over in an unfamiliar land, learn practically an alien language, and assimilate to be accepted as proper Greeks.

Nation-building in this region, as in many others, has been a violent and painful process – even for those it supposedly sought to liberate from empires that treated them as second, or third-class subjects. And a quarter of the 21st century in, the confusion and hurt haven’t gone away. They may be buried beneath the surface of daily life. But they are there, waiting to be scratched.

At the end of the day, the idea that a state can be made up of a single, uniform group of people is dead on arrival. The places that accept, embrace, and design for diversity are the ones that move on. The others – the ones that refuse, or worse, retreat – create a violent, backward world.

I don’t fit into either.

When I tell people how much I plan my travel, I’m usually consigned to the first category. “Ah,” they say, often with a faintly judgmental smile, “but what’s the point of just checking things off a list?”

I agree. That’s not the point. But for me, neither is drifting aimlessly, waiting for meaning to announce itself through vibes and serendipity. That’s a vacation aimed at relaxation. And while I welcome my share of such vacations, I don’t call that travel. I also find it hard to justify flying halfway around the world just to relax. That I can do closer to home—and cheaper.

So if I’m not chasing a list, and I’m not waiting for the universe to deliver, what am I doing?

I travel with intent.

I want to see the sights, yes—but not just to say I’ve seen them. I want to know why that monument exists, why this particular food is on every street corner, how people here think about their past, and what they believe about their present. I want to understand how a place came to be the way it is—the forces, historical, political, cultural, that have shaped what I’m seeing.

And to do that with limited time, I plan. Not because I fear the unknown, but because I want to make space for the real unknowns—the kind that surprise you after you’ve done your homework. I don’t plan to eliminate spontaneity. I plan so that I don’t waste time on decisions I could have made with a little reading, and so that there’s room for spontaneity where it truly serves the purpose.

My planning isn’t about “covering” places. It’s about choosing—what to include, what to leave out, what to spend on, what to skip. It often begins with books—histories, memoirs, fiction set in the region. It also includes a lot of TripAdvisor and Reddit browsing, or a search for real personal blogs of people who have either visited the destination or stay there. I almost always know the in’s and out’s of public transport at the place I’m landing in. I know where to exchange money, and where to avoid it. I know whether we’ll be able to get a local SIM in the same terminal I’m landing in, or if I need to go to another terminal or even into the city for that.

As for the actual destinations, sometimes they’re incredibly touristy. Sometimes they’re completely unassuming. I don’t fetishize either kind. I’m not allergic to popular places, and I’m not obsessed with hidden gems. I go where the why leads me.

Even after I’m back home, the travel isn’t quite over. Sometimes it means finishing the books I didn’t get to read before the trip, or diving into the ones we picked up there. Sometimes it means tracking down a film mentioned offhand by a guide, or thinking about how something I saw connects to a place I visited earlier. The understanding doesn’t arrive all at once—it keeps unfolding. Travel becomes part of how I think, long after the suitcase is unpacked.

That’s what makes it travel, for me.
Not a list, not a vibe—
But a lens.
A way of trying to make sense of the world, one trip at a time.

Free for All!

Discovered towards the end of the 16th century, Svalbard has long been a magnet for human endeavor. Whalers, seal hunters, and reindeer trappers ventured into its icy realms, seeking fortunes amidst perilous conditions. They braved the elements, often arriving in summer and enduring winters in the archipelago in complete isolation, relying solely on their wits and resilience to survive.​

The discovery of coal added another layer to Svalbard’s human history. Many attempts to make coal mining commercially feasible failed, until an American succeeded. So, the most important town in Svalbard is called Longyearbyen, named after the American.

As an aside, it’s an interesting piece of geological history, that such a cold, polar region harbors coal. Today’s temperature is so frigid that bodies do not decompose, and hence no one is allowed to be buried in Svalbard. If someone were to be buried, the body may float up when permafrost melts, exposing the area to diseases (and adding a side of creepiness?). How on earth did living beings get fossilized enough to create coal here? The answer lies in the fascinating geological history, but we will leave that for you to Google (or ask ChatGPT ) and return to the primary point of this article.

Throughout its history—spanning animal hunting, coal mining, research, and now tourism—Svalbard remained without recognized state sovereignty until after World War I.​ It was free for all until then.

Sovereignty with a Big “But”…

Post World War I, Norway was granted sovereignty over Svalbard, partly due to being a “neutral ally” with the victorious powers. Well, Germany kept invading neutral nations, and they kept getting forced into being the “neutral ally” of Allies. The Svalbard museum exhibits present history in a way that seems to suggest that Norwegian sovereignty was inevitable and Norway was actively working toward it. The latter may be partly true, but still assuming the inevitability of the situation indulges in the sin of historical determinism. Anyhow, the Norwegian sovereignty happened, but it came with interesting outcomes. The treaty, now colloquially known as “Svalbard Treaty” ensured that while Norway holds sovereignty, all signatories of the treaty have rights to reside, conduct business, and exploit resources in Svalbard. Does the treaty do anything for India? Turns out, yes. As a successor state of the British Empire, India is a signatory to the treaty. This means that Indians have the right to live, work, and start businesses in Svalbard. Over time more nations became signatory to this treaty. And hence Norwegian government has made Svalbard a completely visa-free zone, even for those who may not be a signatory of the treaty.

The Double Dip of Schengen Visa

And that leads to interesting situations. During our trip preparations, we discovered that despite Svalbard’s visa-free status, a double-entry Schengen visa was necessary. Why? Because reaching Svalbard typically involves transiting through mainland Norway, which is within the Schengen area. Svalbard is a part of Norway, but as a visa-free zone, not a part of Schengen. So, upon returning from Svalbard to mainland Norway, one re-enters the Schengen zone, necessitating a second visa entry. Even Norwegian citizens undergo border control when returning from Svalbard!​

Our journey had its own quirks. We obtained a double-entry visa but arrived in Oslo with minimal time to catch our Svalbard flight. The immigration officer, noting our immediate connection, facilitated our transfer directly from the immigration area. So, we never entered Schengen, our passport was never stamped, and we made it to Svalbard without using our Schengen visa. So, our precious double-entry Schengen visa was used only once, while returning from Svalbard. ​

Different Ways of Being

So, that’s how Svalbard is. It is part of Norway, but unlike the rest of Norway, people from many countries are free to reside, work, do business and exploit resources in the area. It’s part of Norway, Norway is part of Schengen, but Svalbard is not part of Schengen. It’s part of Norway, but Norwegian citizens have to go through border control while returning from there to the mainland. Nobody is allowed to be born there (pregnant women must go to mainland Norway, or elsewhere to give birth), nor can anyone be buried there. So, while much of the world is free to be there, nobody is truly a native of Svalbard.

For those of us who like to think of our countries, or modern nation states, to be uniformly governed areas, such an arrangement looks alien.​

But this phenomenon isn’t exclusive to Svalbard. In Indonesia, the Yogyakarta region maintains a traditional sultanate within a democratic framework, with the sultan serving as the hereditary governor of the special region. Similarly, Aceh province enforces Sharia law, unlike the rest of the country (for good or bad, that’s the case). These examples underscore that different ways of being aren’t inherently illegitimate; they often arise from unique historical and cultural contexts.​

And that turns my thought to our own backyard. India’s former state of Jammu and Kashmir. Its special status within India was a product of peculiar historical circumstances. And all we ever heard about in the rest of the country was how that was not right. But there are different ways of being for places too. Instead of perceiving such statuses as preferential or problematic, perhaps a broader perspective on autonomy and governance could be considered. Perhaps more states in India should have more autonomy. Perhaps there are other regions that need special treatment. Recognizing and appreciating these different ways of being can open our eyes to possibilities we couldn’t have imagined before.​

Can we allow people as well as places the freedom of different ways of being?

Let me be upfront. We may sometimes choose places that are slightly off the fully beaten tourist paths. But we are no explorers and no pioneers. We go to those slightly off places only if we can reach and stay there comfortably, perhaps with some preparation.

When we decided to visit Norway in winter, primarily for the Northern Lights, we prepared a lot. And when we decided to add Svalbard to the mix, we prepared even more. For those uninitiated, Svalbard is the northernmost human settlement in the world. It’s the closest to the North Pole you can get as a regular tourist. While a young British couple in Tromsø later wondered how we even managed to get there (“Did you have to take a boat? How long did it take?”), no, we took a flight. We’re just your average, regular tourists, people! Boats, ferries, and cruises? Those are for fun, not for getting from Point A to B.

But let’s start with our unintended polar adventure. Our itinerary intended to make the best use of time. So, we were to land directly in Svalbard on our first day. The flight sequence was Bangalore -> Doha -> Oslo -> Svalbard. All on the same PNR, with sufficient layovers. Simple, right? Enter geopolitics. We landed in Doha just as the Middle East was seeing some serious missile action. Our flight from Doha took off on time but had to change its route twice, to longer ones, to avoid the war-affected areas. So, our Oslo-to-Svalbard flight started to look like a pipe dream. Onboard, we scrambled with the extremely expensive and extremely slow in-flight internet to reschedule our first night’s Northern Light tour in Svalbard and started wondering about overnight accommodation options in Oslo. Will the airline help? There were follow-up questions! Should we change our entire itinerary to stay in Oslo first? Should we try to get to Svalbard as soon as possible to keep the rest of the itinerary the same?

When we landed in Oslo, we had only about 30 minutes to catch the Svalbard flight. A fellow passenger assured us that Oslo’s airport was small and it was worth trying to catch the flight. As we exited the plane, we saw another passenger hurrying through the crowd. We weren’t even sure they were heading for the same flight, but it gave us the extra motivation to run. What surprised us most was the immigration officer’s proactive help. Upon hearing that we were heading to Svalbard, they made a few calls and ensured that we were put directly on the flight. Never expected that kind of consideration from an immigration official. We made it onto the flight, panting, with minutes to spare. Scandinavians are not cold people after all. Or was the warmth just the heating inside the plane?

It was after we were airborne that the dreadful realization hit: WHAT ABOUT THE LUGGAGE? They couldn’t have transferred the luggage in that short a period, could they?  We tried to stay optimistic on the flight, telling ourselves that at least we had managed to make it to Svalbard. Looking out of the plane window at the polar sky above the clouds, we tried to enjoy the view and tried to feel sure that we would manage it.

Unsurprisingly, the luggage didn’t make it. And so, we landed in the northernmost human settlement in the world, temperatures well below zero, with no luggage.

Svalbard in Poverty

Losing our luggage was a blow, and the only employee at the airport seemed indifferent to our plight. She did help us register our lost luggage report. However, then, we encountered the airport shuttle service—connected to all flights and run informally by our standards—waiting to take passengers to their accommodations. The shuttle doesn’t run on a strict schedule; it waits until all passengers from the flight have exited the airport. On that day, the last passengers were us, and it waited for us. Aww! Such a small, close-knit community. Everybody is taken care of. Surely, we will get our luggage tomorrow and be taken care of here.

Would we though?

Our accommodation was a guest house with a fully equipped kitchen but no restaurant, and it was about 1 km from the city center. We had prepared for these limitations by carrying ready-to-eat food and other essentials. But of course, all of it was in our missing luggage. Walking 1 km in the normal world would not be an issue, but we couldn’t have navigated it in the snow and freezing temperatures without our warm clothes. 

Thankfully, there was a fancy hotel with a restaurant just 100 meters away. It wasn’t meant to be our regular haunt—it was one of the fancier places in Svalbard, which is a more expensive place in an already very expensive Norway! We had a fleece jacket, an outer jacket, and boots. The hood of the outer jacket could protect our heads. With that, gloveless and wearing just jeans for the legs, we braved the cold and walked there, only to find the restaurant fully booked. But some Norwegian warmth came through again: the bar could serve us some food, and we eagerly took them up on it.

The next morning, we obsessively checked the status of our luggage. With the earliest flight arriving at 2 pm (hopefully with the luggage) and the local department store open only from 4 pm to 6 pm (Sunday, of course!), there wasn’t much we could do in the morning. So, we decided to stick to our morning tour plans. The mini-bus tour picked us up from the hotel and shielded us from the cold while we were on the bus. However, stepping out during stops was a chilling experience—literally. Feeling utterly underprepared for the weather, we felt poor. People who didn’t have enough clothes. We also couldn’t help but feel judged by the others on the tour. Nobody likely paid us any attention, but we still felt compelled to explain that our luggage had been left behind, and that’s why we were woefully underdressed.

Post-tour, we asked the driver to drop us at the city center, hoping for any updates on our luggage. The city center, with its heated shops, was the best place to pass the time while we waited. We wandered through stores, looking at winter clothes we might need to buy if our luggage didn’t arrive. Each piece of clothing reminded us of how much we had already spent preparing for this trip back in Bangalore. Now, having to buy everything again here, at Norwegian prices, at a place further from even the Norwegian mainland, well that’s what is called a cruel joke, isn’t it?

We kept checking for updates, holding out in the hope that we wouldn’t need to make these purchases. But when we received no updates until 2.30 pm, after confirming that the flight had landed at 2pm, we reluctantly started buying the clothes. The department store shopping was left for later since it won’t open until 4pm.

Just as we almost finished shopping for clothes, we received the notification: our luggage had arrived. We had already taken the tags off many items for immediate use—we couldn’t exactly walk around Svalbard freezing while debating returns. Still, we decided to try returning the most expensive purchase, a pair of weather-proof pants. Unfortunately, we were told they could only be exchanged, not refunded. Hoping to salvage the situation, we planned to exchange them the next day for smaller, more portable items that could serve as souvenirs for people back home. So, we didn’t wear the pants on our way back! And we could skip the department store purchases.

It was the beginning of polar nights in Svalbard, there was no day to end, only an endless night to navigate. Laden with new clothes, we had initially hoped to take a taxi and tried calling one multiple times, but no one picked up—perhaps another effect of it being a weekend. Resigned to walking, we set out into the freezing polar night. In the hope of exchanging the new pants, our legs were still only protected by our jeans. Although we had gloves, caps, buffs, and the work now. Along the way, we got honked at by multiple drivers, leaving us confused and a little scared. Eventually, a kind local stopped to explain that we were walking on the wrong side of the road and should be using the pedestrian path on the other side, especially since we lacked reflective gear. Feeling foolish but relieved, we switched sides and continued our walk.

Despite the dark and cold, we took solace in noticing a few locals walking around as if it were routine. It made us feel less out of place and not entirely foolish for attempting the walk. By the time we reached the guest house, we were physically exhausted but at least we hadn’t broken any limbs.

We waited a while in the warmth of our room. Then felt anxious. It’s a tiny place. The luggage shouldn’t take this long to be delivered. So, we checked the status of the luggage in the notification we had received. It claimed that they had come and returned after not finding anyone at home!  (Insert every expletive you know here for my reaction.) How could they return the stuff without even calling? Luggage that they brought to a guest house, obviously housing tourists. I was pretty sure they didn’t even try to deliver. Why else would they not call? There was no number for us to call, no information on the next steps.  And nobody picked up calls on any of the regular customer service numbers. Because!! yep – Sunday. And remember, we had canceled our trip to the department store. We hadn’t brushed our teeth in two days, and we still didn’t have a toothpaste or toothbrush. It was too late to walk back to the city center. The store would close before we reached.

That night, we didn’t have the heart to step out for dinner—we had eaten pretty late, just before starting back from the city center, so food wasn’t an issue. However, we did go out for the rescheduled Northern Lights tour. Remember the one from the previous night that was rescheduled to today, using the slow, expensive internet on the flight? Well, that tour turned out to be another blow. According to the tour description, they cancel and refund if there is a very low chance of seeing the Northern Lights. Yet, despite the hopelessly cloudy skies and no real chance of a sighting, they didn’t cancel. So, we ended up on a freezing drive to the same areas we had already explored on the morning tour, with no Northern Lights to speak of, but wearing the weather-proof pants we had hoped to exchange, which made them non-exchangeable. The money had sunk beyond retrieval. In the morning, we felt poor. Now, Abhaya quipped, we are poor.

The “warmth” we had felt from the Norwegian immigration officer who helped us catch our flight, or from the Svalbard airport shuttle that waited for us, was no longer feeling real after today’s luggage and tour experiences. People weren’t honest, and they didn’t seem to care about the disappointment and inconvenience they caused. Was the initial kindness we encountered just an exception?

We began the next day with yet another fancy breakfast at the nearby hotel, still unable to brush our teeth. By this time, we had consumed almost half of the small bottle of mouth freshener we, thankfully, had with us, desperately trying to compensate for the lack of proper hygiene. We were waiting for working hours to begin so that we could make calls about the luggage. Just as we were finishing breakfast, we received the call that our luggage had arrived. We ran over as quickly as possible in the snow and the ice.

Recovery in Svalbard

People! Have you known the joy of being able to brush your teeth? Not until you’ve been stranded without a brush and toothpaste in a place where even all the wealth in the world can’t help you buy one.

In this period, I learned to differentiate between the feel of fresh snow, slush with partially melted snow, and slippery ice caused by packing or melting and refreezing of snow. I also mastered the art of drying clothes on a radiator. And I became even more of an over-planner for future trips if that was even possible.

With Monday came our luggage, the staff in our guest house to provide more immediate information than they were doing on WhatsApp over the weekend, and a taxi company that actually picked up the phone. Finally, things were beginning to look up. We could now do things like visiting the Svalbard Museum and acknowledging the taxi driver’s endless enthusiasm about how lucky we were to witness the beauty of Svalbard covered in fresh snow. And yes, it was beautiful—a snow-covered peak was visible right from our guest house window, and every view around felt magical, though our last two days had been spent surviving that very snow!

Things We Could Do Without…

This was also the first time we entered a new country without local currency or a local SIM card! Because in Oslo we didn’t have the time, and in Svalbard, there’s no place to get either of them. Thankfully, Svalbard, in particular, and Norway, in general, are really possible to visit cash-free. We didn’t need cash at all—cards are, in fact, preferred. And for the first time, we caved to Airtel’s relentless marketing of its international roaming plan. It worked decently enough, so much so that even after returning to the mainland from Svalbard, we didn’t bother getting local currency or a local number. Clearly, survival doesn’t always need spare change or a new phone number.

Chasing Away the Luck (Clouds!) for Northern Lights

From Svalbard, we headed to Tromsø, the prime destination for the Northern Lights. We brought along Svalbard’s snow and clouds, much to the delight of locals who welcomed the first snow of the season. However, clouds aren’t ideal for Northern Lights sighting. So, despite our accommodation host’s claim that lights could be viewed in that area itself, we were simply not going to see any Northern Lights from Tromsø. Thankfully, Tromsø’s tourism companies offer “Northern Lights chases”—tours where they track weather conditions and drive even hundreds of kilometers away from Tromsø to see clear skies. Thanks to these, we did manage to see the Northern Lights on two nights. The first night, it was across the border in Finland! Bucket list checked.

The Rainiest City in Europe, with a Little Bit of Bangalore Factor

Next, we landed in Bergen. Turned out, I hadn’t researched enough, hence I didn’t know that Bergen is the rainiest city in Europe, with over 240 rainy days a year. Naturally, it poured continuously upon our arrival. Equipped with umbrellas and rainproof boots, we embarked on a morning walking tour only to discover our jackets weren’t rainproof enough. By the afternoon of 31st October, we had switched to raincoats giving us more of a Halloween look than Diwali (check photo for reference!). An elderly Norwegian couple in the hotel even thought we were going trick-or-treating.

But it wasn’t just another rainy day in Bergen. It was more chaotic than usual, like we had brought our Bangalore factor to Bergen. According to our taxi driver the next morning, it was the worst in years—basements were flooded, and the administration had to make emergency arrangements. Although we didn’t notice much of it in the touristy areas we were exploring, the chaos was real and hit us the next day when it derailed our plans.

The Most Beautiful Train Ride in the World

The Bergen-Oslo line is touted as one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world. Since we didn’t have time for the more elaborate “Norway in a Nutshell” tour, this was our chance. That’s why we had booked a day train instead of a night train, choosing to dedicate the day to this experience instead of saving time for sightseeing. So, is it the most beautiful train ride in the world, people?

So, is it the most beautiful train ride in the world? How on earth would I know?

The previous day’s rains had wreaked havoc on the railways. Our train was canceled due to safety hazards. No buses were running either. If we needed to reach Oslo that day, our only option was to book a flight. And have I told you? Norway is EXPENSIVE. Everything was expensive, even when booked months in advance. Imagine the eye-watering costs of booking a flight on the same day! With no real alternative, we decided that we were meant to enjoy another day in Bergen. Since we had already checked out of the hotel, we left our luggage in the lockers at the station (yes, even those are expensive in Norway) and changed our ticket to the next train that hadn’t been canceled (yet!) at 4 pm. Then we walked back to some of the places we wanted to explore. 

4 pm train did take off. But with the darkness that surrounded it, the most beautiful train ride has to wait for another day (year!).

Norwegian Weekend, Yet Again

In the original plan, we were supposed to reach Olso by Friday afternoon, and were supposed to have a restful Friday night. We reached after 1 am on Saturday, instead.

To prepare for the flight back home on early Sunday morning, we took it easy on Saturday. But we couldn’t leave Norway without encountering its weekend quirks yet again. Public transport to Oslo Airport on Sunday morning didn’t start until 5 am. Our flight? At 6 am. What about a taxi? Have I mentioned that Norway is… EXPENSIVE? The taxi fare to Oslo Airport was a cruel joke, even by Norwegian standards. So, after perusing many Reddit threads for solutions, we resigned ourselves to spending the night at the airport.

It wasn’t cozy. Pre-check-in areas were cold and uncomfortable, and sleep was impossible. The only solace was that we weren’t alone in this. Far too many people were spending the night at the airport.

And that’s how we boarded a 24-hour flight back home without having slept well for two nights in a row. The plan, of course, was to be well-rested before this flight.

At least Lufthansa treated us well. The horror stories that I have heard of their treatment of Indian passengers did not come to pass with us. They were pretty pleasant on our flights. Our luggage also made it back with us, albeit with one suitcase torn. Unsure if it can be reliably repaired. A fitting end to a trip that was unintentionally adventurous from start to finish.

Oh, I forgot to mention how the trip had started in Bangalore. While loading our luggage in the taxi to the airport, one of the two reusable glass bottles we always carry for water fell out and shattered. So, yes – the universe had given us a signal from the very beginning. We just didn’t know what it portended.