The young men surged around the groom, their laughter rising above the beats of the Pentecostal band. They tossed him into the air, and caught him – Rand notes fluttering like paper moths—slipped behind his ear, pressed into the gleaming line of his hair, tucked into his pockets. Moments before, the bride had appeared. An entourage of young women led her along the aisle: some laid sheets of cloth in front of her so her feet would not touch the floor, others trailed behind, holding a plastic umbrella over her head. Her eyes were lowered in ritual humility, her embroidered dress catching the light each time she moved.

Inside the church, more than a thousand worshippers swayed and danced, the sound thick and electric in the air. All of them were refugees from Zimbabwe – almost all without legal status and most worked in menial jobs despite being educated. For all the joy and laughter, beyond the sheet-metal walls and barbed wire, violence brooded. Fire licked in the township’s densely packed, poorly built homes —a reminder that joy existed in defiance, of lurking danger. The tiny corner shops are run by enterprising Somalis and Ethiopians, well organized, they dominate the retail economy selling items in such small quantities as the market could bear: sugar by the spoonful, cell access for an hour – further perpetuating poverty.

 I had already been bored of Cape Town’s  pristine tourist face – the V&A Waterfront –  polished glass, fine wine, curated beauty, and spotless pavements. In relief, below the majestic Table Mountain, the  city’s postcard Sunday market gleamed with designer boutiques, pastel textiles, artisanal cheeses, and perfectly arranged pastries. Of course as a constant reminder of the traumatic history of this country, the shoppers were white and the servers mostly township blacks and coloureds (racial terms are not derogatory here). It could well have been Manhattan’s Chelsea market on High Line park, minus the frayed edges that lend their uneasy authenticity. Unlike in the V&A district where everything shines, but nothing feels real.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked the waiter after my second glass of wine which accompanied a rich, well prepared, generous seafood platter.

He hesitated at first, wary of his supervisor who entered the room .

When his supervisor turned away, he whispered, ‘in the township by the airport’.

I asked softly, “Will you take me to your township?” 

“No, no, no,” he said and after a pause added. “I could not protect you.”

The word ‘township’ carries the lingering weight of the past—its syllables still holding the geometry of apartheid: separation, distance, survival. Yet what he said next erased abstraction. 

“There is no value in human life there,” he murmured. “Your colour will kill you. Holding an iPhone will kill you. Nice shoes will…” 

The sentence dissolved as quickly as it came, as his supervisor re-emerged. The silence that followed said more than words could.

I shifted the conversation when the supervisor moved to another area. “Is there a church in your township?” I asked, grasping for common ground. 

He nodded. “Many churches. My Uncle, Uncle Joe. His wife leads the choir.”

The next morning, Uncle Joe arrived at my hotel—tall, rotund, composed, eyes alive with chatter. We greeted each other with a sequence of handshakes and smiles,

‘I have arranged everything. The whole congregation is excited. The pastors are expecting you.’ We drove on the pristine N2 highway past well ordered power stations – a legacy of the apartheid regime. But as we turned into the township we were greeted by a raging fire.

My arrival days earlier had carried its own cargo of warnings. From Dubai’s departure gate to the airplane’s descent over the Atlantic rim, strangers repeated a single refrain: ‘Don’t go out at night’. Their words carrying a note of conspiracy. “I was born in a township,” one man told me, his vowels shaped by the polyphony of South Africa’s history—Indian, Black, coloured, white. His wife drew a small invisible circle with her finger. “Always keep your eyes moving,” she said.

By the time the plane dipped toward Cape Town, unease had calcified from curiosity to fear. I was arriving from a cathartic trip to India, where poverty evokes pity rather than menace. Yet here, on the threshold of another postcolonial democracy, a different truth waited—one that lived in contrasts too sharp for comfort.

On the map, South Africa is a nation poised at the continent’s edge, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet in a turbulent seam. In its political imagination, it remains a place of unfinished reckonings—a country that dismantled apartheid’s architecture yet still bears its shadows in land, wealth, and everyday gaze. Modern democracy here was grafted onto the bones of empire, and those bones still show.

For months before arriving, I had studied its stories from afar—films dense with violence, novels weighed with moral ambiguity, the voices of Coetzee and Gordimer dissecting conscience with surgical precision. Yet nothing in print or image could prepare me for the human landscape that awaited, where faith, fear, hope, and survival intertwined like the harmonies of a township choir.

All I learned crumbled in the face of the stark truths of the nation: low economic growth, growth without employment, dramatic population growth in the townships where youth unemployment is said to be eighty percent. Now I wonder, when I witness the deep divisions between its citizens and remarkable disparity of wealth, what Nelson Mandela would say: his ANC’s socialist and communist patrons abandoned for the capitalism of the minuscule minority – the bridge between citizens too wide a chasm to breach.

Life, in its cunning, delivers grace at moments least expected. It moves in spirals—returning, revisiting, revealing fragments of ourselves we thought lost, yet each time casting new light upon them. In these helical turns, we glimpse our becoming reflected in those we love most. A son or daughter often carries forward the echoes of our counsel, our cautions, our restless hopes, and all our lived experience. The age-old admonition, “Don’t do what I did, but do what I say,” is never convincing. And so my daughter, passionate in her search, holds up a mirror to the very things I once turned away from.

I left her—a child of Canada, a devoted classical dancer, a seeker of spirit—near Auroville, Tamil Nadu. Having quit her six-figure job against my counsel, she now lives here, works on her art, eats at the many fusion restaurants, and drives her noisy scooter along the congested roads back and forth to Auroville.

That still, green enclave tucked within Auroville is where people from every corner of the world gather to live the improbable dream of oneness and unity—a dream I once cherished in my teens and then vehemently dismissed in middle age when driven by business. Yet now, watching her there, I find myself looking at this place anew.

Conceived in the 1920s and sanctified by UNESCO in the 1960s as a testament to human unity, Auroville remains a rare, living experiment in harmony. Its three and a half thousand residents—half of them from India, half from the rest of the world—weave daily life into a quiet hymn of coexistence focused on human unity and sustainable living: reclaiming ecological forests, developing renewable energy, creating new green-building techniques, running schools, practicing arts, cultivating farms, and operating restaurants—in the town that “no one owns” and where no one works for salaries—all without adherence to any specific religion. In my daughter’s arrival, I witnessed both her beginning and my own long-delayed return.

Auroville was born of the vision of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950)—philosopher, revolutionary, mystic, and poet—and brought into being by the will of Mirra Alfassa (1878–1973), the French artist later known simply as the Mother. With the Indian government’s blessing, it became a place where foreigners could live and work free from the normal constraints of nationality. The remarkably talented actress, Kalki Koechlin – fluent in English, French, Tamil, and Hindi – herself born in Pondicherry to French parents, once said, “My skin is white, but my heart is brown.” In that simple confession lies the spirit of Auroville—belonging that transcends borders.

My own search as an adolescent first brought me to Aurobindo’s ideas decades ago. His words offered a map for my young immigrant’s restlessness. At thirteen, adrift between continents and raised by a father enamoured of the West, I searched for meaning in the universal. A face brown and a heart steeped in Shakespeare, Blake, Elliot, and King James Bible.

Aurobindo, too, was sent to England as a child of seven in 1879, exiled from his own culture by a father’s misguided wish to insulate him from all things Indian. Despite his deep immersion in ancient Greek and Latin at Cambridge and his prodigious poetry (his poem, ‘ Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol’ remains the longest poem in the English language), his lifelong search was for universal truths and spiritual synthesis—a bridge over the civilizational chasm between East and West, ancient and modern.

Now, as the world appears to turn away from those ideas and ideals, I find myself wondering if, through my daughter, I will find a home here.

Late in the afternoon, the road approaching Chennai’s airport had settled into its usual state of anarchy. What should have been three lanes behaved more like a migrating herd, forever splitting and merging, vehicles nosing into any open space with the persistence of thirsty animals at a shrinking waterhole. The tuk-tuks pierced the din with nervous, high-pitched beeps; scooters whined in protest; and trucks thundered in deep bellows. Some two-wheelers, equipped with truck horns, seemed more able to clear the way in front of them.

Just as the traffic light ahead turned orange, our car slipped through. A few metres on, two khaki-clad policemen ushered several cars to the curb – ours among them. We joined a silent procession of vehicles: a line of drivers standing by their cars, staring ahead with calm, distant, somewhat resigned looks.

Our driver walked over to a policeman, exchanged a few quiet words, and then returned, shoulders slightly lower. “Saar,” he said, leaning in through the window, “one thousand rupees.”

“For what?”
“For a bribe, Saar.”

There are moments in travel when a place introduces itself not with a monument or a meal, but with a single, perfectly honest sentence. This was one of them.

“What did we do wrong?”
“He says we crossed on red,” the driver replied.
“But you didn’t,” I said. “It was yellow. Does he have a photo?”

The driver’s eyes did a brief tour of the heavens, then returned to mine. “Saar, it is not worth arguing. He asked for two thousand. I agreed for one thousand. It is better this way.”

Somewhere behind us, a horn performed a long, operatic solo, perhaps in sympathy.
“Why not pay him with Google Pay?” I muttered, ‘like you pay for everything else.’

He turned, scandalized by my naïveté. “This is why they are going cashless, Saar. These people do not take Google Pay. You cannot bribe in e-comm.” He shook his head slowly, as though disappointed by my fundamental misunderstanding of it. Money changed hands with quiet efficiency. A nod from the policeman, and we were released back into the stream, the traffic folding around us as if we had never left.

“So how much is the actual fine for going through a red light?” I asked.
“Two hundred and fifty rupees,” he said.
“And he asked for two thousand?”
“Yes. I settled for one thousand.”

Outside, the vehicles resumed their restless ballet, slipping across lanes.

“What would he have done if you refused?”
The driver did not hesitate. “They only stop cars from outside Chennai. Those with Out-of-state, out-of-town license plates. They know which ones are going to the airport. They can keep you here six, seven hours, slowly raising the price.”

He nodded towards the lorries thundering past. “Those trucks are not going to the airport. Local cars, maybe. Auto-rickshaws, no money. You, Saar…” He tilted his head at me with a faint smile, “…you are airport.”

He let that sink in for a moment, then added, almost kindly, “Think of it as airport tax.” He laughed then, a short, helpless laugh before I laughed with him — at the system, at the day, at the way a simple traffic stop could lay bare an entire ecosystem of opportunism and adaptation. All the while, I silently admired the business acumen and teamwork of the policemen – where to operate, how to target your customer, and how to price appropriately. The cacophony of dissonant horns rose again around us. It seems Old India is still lurking, albeit in its last throes.

I am a seasoned traveller. I have the hygienic travel habits of intrepid travellers. Habits to make sure I don’t lose things that matter: passport, cell phone, cash and credit stored in 3 places:wallet, carry on, and personal item. If traveling through Brazilian favellas – safest places in Rio are airbnbs rented from drug lords rather than tourist neighbourhoods which their residents invade – bring expired credit cards to replace active credit cards in my wallet.

Despite planning and precaution, I am doomed to lose something. Each of the moments I lose something have certain traits. Typically it will be lost early on a trip when the travel habits are not established, and when something unaccustomed happens.

I lost my iPad. Brand new, fully appointed to replace my laptop so I may travel lighter on a three month trip through South India and South Africa. The moment I lost it had a few unaccustomed variables courtesy of the new emerging India.

Firstly security in Indian airports is very competent and thorough – in part due to Israeli training – and in this case they stopped to ask me about my paper binder containing my ever-nascent novel, and also my blood glucose testing kit. Their queries absorbed my attention and I noticed the agent took my boarding pass from my security tray and jotted down my details on it – something that’s never happened to me. Lo and behold, I gathered all my things except the brand new fully loaded IPad and left.

Late that evening, in a city hundreds of kilometers away I discovered my loss. I searched frantically for a number to call at my departure airport and was relieved then astounded to have someone answer the phone! Then to speak to me in perfect English in what is a regional airport! He gave me a WhatsApp link and asked me to call in a half hour. I did. He had the iPad in hand and sent a text with an email address and exact instructions on what I need to pick it up and also exact instructions to have someone pick it up on my behalf.

As my mind eased, I reflected on my situation. As an expat – I left India as a child – on numerous trips to the subcontinent, I have seen remarkable changes in the country in the past ten years. A lost iPad suddenly shed light on the changes: a lost item at one time was just that: lost. Or rather, stolen. Baggage handlers once took bribes in concert with the check-in agents, Customs agents turned the other way at the sight of a carefully wrapped wad of cash, security was a casual affair managed by a beetle-nut chewing guard, yet I had just found my iPad with no expectation whatsoever!

The changes wrought not only herald a maturing country but one that in some ways is leap frogging into a new age: key personnel are being paid enough that the cost of deceit in too high, and furthermore the speed at which the country has moved to a cashless society due to a remarkably competent identification and banking system has reduced the cash that once ‘paved the way’ past annoying gatekeepers of state enterprises. The combination of factors seems to have made age old practices less economically viable. The rate of change portends the emergence of a nation on the verge of entering a modern economy. Yet its march into modernity, it will preserve its distinct nature: businessmen and bare-footed pilgrims wander in pristine airport malls amongst Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and McDonald’s, and the teeming middle class will find bookshelves filled with Indian English book.

Motorcycles dominate the roads of India. In the millions of villages the domination is more pronounced since two wheelers can more easily navigate the crowded, narrow, severely uneven roads more readily than cars. These rural roads crowd into the very edges of the broad, high speed multilane federal highways on both sides – highways that do not allow three wheelers and two wheelers.

India is booming, and evidence of the remarkable economic growth pervades even the tiniest of villages – gone are the bullock carts, and the foot traffic that once took centre stage now stays along the curb-less edges. Even bicycles have given way to motorcycles as the lowest strata of the population has discovered the economic benefits of faster locomotion.

The riders display remarkable feats of traffic-weaving around four wheelers, pedestrians (many of them barefooted pilgrims to local deities), massive slow-moving lorries, occasional herds of water buffalo, with remarkable agility, even on some of deeply carved dirt roads. All this while carrying goods to market strewn over several towns or often transporting the entire family of five to schools, temples, and churches.

For servants and labourers once locked into caste professions rapid locomotion has opened avenues for entrepreneurship and side hustles never seen before. Ultimately, it is the expansion of the economy, and the pace (though slower in rural areas) of infrastructure development to support it that will create a new India of millions of entrepreneurs. Eventually it will be the speed of transportation that will enable new entrants into the an increasingly modern economy.

“Combat is so religious and spiritual! Get up each morning and go out to die!” Al Sever, and American Vietnam War veteran who served for five years as a helicopter gunner texted me. For the first time I viscerally encountered the truths I could only access in theory and speculation. Having been deeply moved, for much of life, by the dialogue between God/Krishna and the warrior/prince Arjuna in the heat of battle, in Kurushetra an inner shock reverberated in my spine.

“I served from 1968 to 1972.” Al texted me some time later,”and I died on September 10, 1970 in the Mekong Delta.” Certain he had succumbed to autocorrect, I asked, “you mean you almost died.””No,” he replied, “I died and went into the tunnel to the other side.”

Those of us living under the diverse influences of globalism, and immigration have searched exhaustively through the pages of the Bhagavad Gita and its many interpretations for solace. The man who assassinated Gandhi, and Gandhi himself quoted the great epic – one finding inspiration to kill and one for non-violence. That Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, would quote the Gita when the first bomb exploded in Alamogordo, merely miles from the quaint homes of Los Alamos, New Mexico gives pause.

The simple truth of Al Sever, raised in small town Pennslyvania in the heart of a coal mining country with little luxury for great texts of the world is that the heightened sense of being that arises when one is tasting mortality with every breath holds within it spiritual truths. Now Alan – filled with painful wisdom wanders those battle grounds still pockmarked with bomb craters like the ancient capital, Hue – epic street battle that changed the course of the war, and Cu Chi tunnels where the Americans, their sniffer dogs, bombs, and tunnel rats could not destroy men who crawled through hundreds of miles of tunnel- some twenty meters deep and emerge long enough to kill and disappear again

Yet there is not a hint of malice for the enemy nor the enemy for him. Contrarily there is much respect between former adversaries and little trust in the conveyors of the war in his own country. It was duty. It was dharma. The scars have become grist for inner transformation to both him and the former enemy. Despite eschewing religion, Alan’s is a pilgrimage for meaning, whether in the rubble of the battle ground or in his multiple treks along Camino de Compostela.

Ironically, the capitalists fear of communism that drove the war has resulted in a nation racing to the highest growth rate in the world, fuelled by a powerful cocktail of one-party rule and unbridled entrepreneurism. Today Vietnam accrues the benefit of President Clinton – a draft exempt American –  normalizing the relationship between warring countries, and of Trump – another draft exempt American – whose ire toward China has meant opportunity for Vietnam.

Those of us who live lives anesthetized  by middle class comforts, secure in serving as cogs in faceless bureaucracies and corporations forever metered on quarterly statements are free to contemplate the philosophies with no risk. Those who have faced mortality in every breath do not shed any tears, and stand by in profound silence. To some a guilt ridden silence, to some a silence of ineffable pain, and to some a silence of hope. I wonder if this is what Krishna meant when he said to Arjuna, “Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.”

 

“We would be pleased if you would teach English to our classes.” The principal of the middle school said through the interpreter, Minh – my former street food guide in Hanoi, 100 kms to the west. Then as an afterthought, he added, “But please do not speak of religion or politics.”

Ahn Lao is between a Hanoi and Haiphong, the industrial city near Halong Bay. It has 1500 citizens scattered in handful of streets that all ended in small holdings of rice fields – some barely an acre. Minh was born in the village. It was to those fields that his family trudged for generations, while the males intermittently went to war – the French war, the American war, the Cambodia War, the Chinese war, and regional battles long forgotten. Here they eked out a living as massive industrial complexes moved into the area after the government invited foreign investment in 1986. Assembly plants edge within a few kilometers of this bucolic village – surrounded by condominiums for foreign executives. The youth are abandoning the rice fields and the narrow main street to the highway is jammed with motorbikes at all hours of the day.

This is “Red” Minh’s (“Red” is his TikTok persona) family home – two bedrooms, the altar to ancestors, both kitchen and bathrooms outside, surrounded by trees- Jackfruit, Dragon fruit, Grapefruit, Peach, Persimmon, and Bananas, bordered with flowers – Roses, Chrysanthemum, and Orchid. Mrs. Minh – widowed when her husband could not be saved during a cardiac event – invited me graciously, her dog and two puppies by her side. I entered the home, leaving my shoes at the door and bent in prayer to acknowledge the ancestors. Over green tea Mrs. Minh told me that she was not an influential person in the village but has managed to arrange to meet the village head and the woman who looked after the Buddhist shrine at the edge of the village, and the man who maintains the Nyugen Val family mausoleum.

“Unfortunately,” she continued in Vietnamese, “The district manager will not see you. They are afraid you may be a spy.” and added with a soft imperceptible smile, “I think it is because they are all corrupt and afraid of strangers.” Minh interjected that his old teacher would like me to teach English to Grade 6 and Grade 9 students. “You will be a celebrity here.” He said, “the first foreigner to come to the village.” Just as he said these words, I looked out of the door to be greeted by several elderly women in the courtyard smiling and waving.

The most noticeable aspect of the kids in the middle school – a large, clean compound surrounded on three sides by rice field, and party flags prominently at the entrance – is that they are remarkably attentive and respectful to their elders. There is an air of acceptance of authority and willingness to comply with teachers. Minh and I had agreed that we would use global geography and sports – the least controversial of subjects – as vehicles to teach English and brought along bagful of treats to be given as rewards for participation – the excitement was boundless. Except for one or two eager students, the level of knowledge of English and geography was poor but there was great enthusiasm to learn.

It was not until evening descended with orange and purple clouds reflecting vividly on the rice fields the village erupted with vibrant life. Volleyball players rising from the ground and spiking balls and betting with each serve, the pragmatic yet striking woman in her bright red dress dipping her ladle into one of the row of local rice toady barrels to fill another order and the loud men in the only bar by the side of the road.

The owner of the bar – and also loudest most incoherent patron – erupted in glee when Minh and I walked in the door and immediately announced, “I could not meet you at the office, but now, we will drink together and I will answer every question you have.” And turned to Minh and said in Vietnamese, “you understand I could not talk to him at the office when you mother asked me.

Minh had warned me that this group and in particular, the district manager would be loud and say things they don’t mean. The district manger pointed to the female server and said, “this is the girl you want. She is soft. She is a catholic.” I laughed and said, “I am sure she is soft and she is beautiful but I am married.” She smiled broadly and shook my hand and scolded the owner. “I can tell by looking at you that you are an intelligent man.” He said, “so what can I tell you about our humble village.”

“I am curious how the village is managed. I just came from an Indian village. How do you resolve disputes? Crimes? I asked. “We have no crime here.” He said, before he handed me a hookah that they were sharing and held a long soliloquy to the others about the great work of the district committee.

That night Minh and I walked home to find his mother distort. One of the puppies had been stolen. Minh noticed my shock and said, “it’s okay. They will not eat it. It’s too young. They probably just raise it as pet.”

When walking in the streets of Old Quarter of Hanoi, known locally as Hoàn Kiếm, it is best to heed the word of the renowned Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, “Breathing in, I release the tension in my body. Breathing out, I smile.” That may be the best state of being with which to walk the streets of Old Hanoi. Almost certainly you will encounter countless street crossings and intersections along its narrow streets, their sidewalks spilling with street vendors and scores of people hunching over their green tea on tiny stools. A moving interlocking wall of traffic – pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws, motorbikes, cars, trucks, carts, and an occasional giant tour bus weave around each other even through traffic lights like a perpetual square dance without a caller.

 It is not easy to escape this run through the gauntlet of traffic in Old Hanoi’s narrow streets and intersections. There are green lights for pedestrians and although there is some profit in waiting for them, it is important to not lose a moment of attention as the green lights serve merely as optional for the charging traffic. “Walk slowly, but confidently” my street food tour guide told me, “You will confuse them if you walk too fast or seem uncertain.” “I have crossed streets in India,” I told me, “and I even practiced back and forth to get it right but this in different.” “How?” he asked. “In India all the moving participants in the street never lose eye contact with each other. They even have subtle eye and hand gestures to signal each other. Here there is nothing.” “Everyone is in their own world here,” He said, “preoccupied with their own thoughts.”

Westerners are the most dangerous of street crossers for local traffic but most of the moving hoard adjust for that fact. However, it is very important that newcomers practice the street walk in areas of low traffic, wait an extra length of time, or raise their hand in the air to announce their every move. Confidence will build with some practice and the final stage is to arrive at the Zen-like state in which the pedestrian becomes one with the traffic. Such a state will help in walking the streets of Old Hanoi and this newfound freedom will go a long way in enjoying the many streets that stay true to their original trade: Shoe Street (Hang Dau), Silk Street (Hang Gal), Bamboo Street (Hang Vai), Silver Street (Hang Bac), and Traditional Medicine Street (Lan Ong).

 There is some likelihood that you will see a phenomenon that I witnessed in which dozens of sidewalk food vendors suddenly, like well practiced stage hands, disappear in seconds – their customers hustled into alleys, the tiny stools disappearing, the lights turned off and sidewalk swept. The cause – someone had phoned ahead that authorities were in the neighbourhood to police unlicensed vendors. Licensed or not the street food is superb – the produce is fresh and natural and the process of cooking clearly visible.

 Also it is possible to encounter a “shoe repair” urchin that will point to your shoe and in one swift motion remove it from your foot, place the foot on a slipper – then adeptly sew up a nonexistent tear for an absorbent price. Almost certainly you will see someone burning play money – often $100 – in honour of ancestors. The various spa and foot massage services – all competent – are ready to help at a reasonable price to relieve feet from a day’s walk, and the omnipresent “Grab” motorbike-taxis are ready to offer a ride. Sadly, for males walking alone, the Grab drivers will boldly demonstrate their diverse offering of the most ancient of professions.