Soliloquy

27 October 2026, Tuesday
BETALBATIM, outside MARGĀO, PORTUGUESE INDIA
Today, you aimed to go home, but not before you gave your Goan aspirations a once-over, and your newfound sense of independence a curb in enthusiasm. The village centre stood still, with many crossing themselves in front of the church of Our Lady of Remedios. But before you could buy a copy of O Heraldo, the children who were on their way to school were replaced by their parents, who heaved a sigh of relief at having nothing more to do but tuck into patal bhaji and pao. Ruben Gomes, a septuagenarian who had once sold trinkets in Bombay’s Crawford Market, wished you well before you left town. Upon being questioned about his relationship with a Deccan he had known long before Aurangzeb’s siege, he merely claimed to be well-read, and not well-travelled. You could not have left Portuguese India without being touched by the warmth of such men.

26 October 2026, Monday
BETALBATIM, outside MARGĀO, PORTUGUESE INDIA
You heard the poder before you smelled his produce. The poi he sold – for a meagre INR 3 – seemed deceptively soft, and you dreamt of the omelettes you would so gleefully place between each sheaf. The poi smelt of love, and before you could ask him what he meant by giving you seven for INR 20, he had cycled away. On the beach, you reminisced about the Margāo you had once known, and in the evening, finding yourself in the Portuguese city’s lap, you devoured two cups of fragrant Goan tea at Citi Café as the last rays of the sun swathed Fatorda. Dogears Bookstore – where you had first met Maria Aurora Couto and Michelle Mendonça – closed at six-thirty, and in the rush to not be late, you forgot to leave any tips, much to the dismay of the waiter, who, after getting to know that you were from the Deccan, had assumed you to be large-hearted.

25 October 2026, Sunday
BETALBATIM, outside MARGĀO, PORTUGUESE INDIA
There was no such thing as an inhospitable Goan, and merely to prove this point, Cicero D’Silva, Inacio Miranda, José Pereira and Vishwesh Mapsekar swept you off your feet for the best cafreal in town. Of the holy trifecta of Goan cooking – cafreal, vindaloo and xacuti – you favoured the former the most. Fatorda saw Valanka and Churchill Alemao grimace at the referee for being blind to the visitors’ flaws, and following the pin-drop silence at full-time, you could hardly have guessed that in two days, the former would go on to become the first woman president of the Goa Football Association.

24 October 2026, Saturday
BETALBATIM, outside MARGĀO, PORTUGUESE INDIA
You circled over the Western Ghats, whistled through cashew plantations and wondered about the farmers who had sold their lands to the saffron nationalists and died rich – and possibly fat – on the lowlands of Cabo de Rama in the south. On the northern peaks of Mopa, in the company of a fellow hirsute, you thought of the sunshine – but not the heat or the humidity that Calcutta had bestowed on you as a legacy less than two weeks ago – before careening south in a move that would have flummoxed most Bengalureans.

24 October 2026, Saturday
HYDERABAD, THE NIZAM’S DOMINIONS
The alarm was set for 7 AM, and you thanked the heavens for the small mercy of being allowed to stay until late in bed on this grey autumn morning. Another adventure – a tropical one at that – lay on the cards, and since you would not rest till the caravan moved from Jangpura to Fatorda, you suffered from the loneliness of the vocalist with a cough.

4 October 2026, Sunday
BENGALURU, MYSORE STATE
You would be travelling home with only one regret. Driven by the paucity of time, you could not pay homage at your temple, Vidyarthi Bhavan. You made up for such feelings of scarcity by gorging on the podi ghee dosai at The Filter Coffee on 80 Ft. Road, followed by an iced mocha from Anāma. But the loneliness lingered on the way home well past Kurnool until you were accosted by a middle-aged lady who appeared lonelier than you had ever been.

3 October 2026, Sunday
BENGALURU, MYSORE STATE
You rued your inability to speak Kannada the moment you touched down in Bengaluru and marvelled at the floor-to-ceiling windows that would have seemed more relevant at the airport in Berlin. You begrudged the taxi driver’s proficiency at pretending that he had no inkling of Hindi being a language the moment you protested against him driving the fare up. You then resorted to Telugu, that of the most ancient of languages brought forth from proto-Dravidian, and you felt him warm up, if not welcome you outright.

3 October 2026, Sunday
CALCUTTA, BENGAL PRESIDENCY
From Belgaum to Bidhan Nagar, a heterogeneous India had sprung up where you could order an iced long black and a sandwich of house-made brioche at a counter manned by a lady whose husband beat her for fun every night. This was an India that you were not keen on getting to know. Did you resent your flea-ridden guesthouse in Sector 1 or envy the sanity that Salt Lake City presented? Or would you rather have shifted out of your guesthouse to the five-star that adorned your workplace, played on the conscience of your mother by complaining about this city’s ills – which she loves more than she loves herself – and asked her to reimburse you? No, even you could not have stooped that low.

Gandhi Jayanti 2026, Saturday
CALCUTTA, BENGAL PRESIDENCY
You wonder whether Hastings, Bentinck and Mountbatten walked on the streets where you walk today. What if this city had not lived and breathed, and what if your forebears were not put to the sword, or not driven out of their homeland? What would have been your perception of the other side then – resentment at the Muhammadan peasants who burnt your house to rubble, or gratitude to another Muhammadan, His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, who provided refuge? 16 years ago, on this day, you had taken up cricket professionally in the Nizam’s dominions.

1 October 2026, Friday
CALCUTTA, BENGAL PRESIDENCY
Kipling called it the city of dreadful night, and Lapierre mollycoddled it by terming it the city of joy. How could you envision the latter without having felt the former? The stench, the heat, the disease – how could you picture a Calcutta without deprivation? You could not possibly mistreat this accidental city of your birth, where you had breathed – albeit in its fetid air – for the first time 28 years ago. 500 kilometres seems too long a distance to traverse amid the malarial shores of the Padma today. Lost in the remote memory of Nawab Bahadur Sailesh Bhowmick, would you have favoured the Brahmaputra instead?

1 October 2026, Saturday
HYDERABAD, THE NIZAM’S DOMINIONS
The new month had begun, but you barely registered it. Did a journalistic foray into the country’s hinterlands require another early start? Such introspections could barely have formed of their own accord when you leapt out of bed, propelled by thoughts of self-importance at 4:30 AM. At least you had slept an hour more than you had last week: of such small victories were your days now made.

26 September 2026, Saturday
BENGALURU, MYSORE STATE
Church Street – and its denizens – appeared to be getting younger by the year, until you recalled with a grimace that you had just turned two shy of thirty on Tuesday. You remembered words that your English teacher had last taught you in 2005 and most of all, you remembered not to speak in Hindi, for you wanted to leave this town with your skin – and some bits of your dignity – still intact.

25 September 2026, Friday
BENGALURU, MYSORE STATE
It started raining on Fort Road on your way to the Kanteerava, after you had so ominously decided upon public transport as a way out of the fracas the city prides itself upon. You ran past the Visveswaraya Museum when no hope of refuge from the weather materialised, and crossed Kasturba Marg to come face-to-face with the HDFC building. Trudging in the rain, wet in your boots, you began to have a sense of homecoming only when St Joseph’s reared its head to the left; you looked twice to the right before quickly crossing the road, entering the Kanteerava by a side entrance and looking for respite from the rain. You were supposed to face the world for the first time today.

24 September 2026, Thursday
BENGALURU, MYSORE STATE
You took a vow of silence upon disembarking in Bengaluru. The drizzle accompanied you from Hyderabad, and the sun seemed to have disappeared altogether. You signalled using your hands to auto-rickshaw drivers, and you mimed your way out of unpleasant conversations on buses. You saw men of your kin on the metro, but the barriers of Instagram reels appeared difficult to breach.

24 September 2026, Thursday
HYDERABAD, THE NIZAM’S DOMINIONS
The alarm rang with precision, and you stepped out of bed bleary-eyed yet alive: the purpose which drove your life propelled you into the shower, where you were left ruminating on whether there was any better way to begin a new season of travel than by waking up at 3:30 AM. Even the truth, which you were so hell-bent upon seeking, slept at such ungodly hours.

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