My long Diwali celebrations of 2025 had been some of the most memorable and spontaneous days in a while.

I believe Diwali started early for me, on the 15th of October. After learning, upon arrival at NDLS, that my train to Gorakhpur was severely delayed, I tried to find a calm spot on the platform to pass some time. Walking towards the end of the platform, I found an area with barely any people except for two cheerful police ladies chatting. I took a seat close to them and started reading Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart. Eventually, the police ladies moved off, leaving room for a drunk old man. He stared intensely at me, far more intensely than the perpetual gaze foreigners receive in India. I just carried on reading. The section I was reading was about maturing and the lack of being able to go further than the eternal:


“For in relation to the Eternal, a man ages neither in the sense of time nor in the sense of an accumulation of past events. No, when an old person has outgrown the childish and the youthful, ordinary language calls this maturity and a gain. But willfully ever to have outgrown the Eternal is spoken of as falling away from God and as perdition and only the life of the ungodly ‘shall be as the snail that melts as it goes.’”


Only seconds after being struck by this passage, Diwali kicked in: a young open guy sat down beside me and started talking. Abhishek was his name. I immediately had a good feeling talking to him. He asked me why I didn’t move away from the drunk guy staring at me, nor the trash right next to me. It hadn’t bothered me too much. Then the old drunk guy walked up to us and asked us for food. I only had my sourdough bread on me, which I shared with him. I don’t think he really liked it… As the man started shivering when eating the sourdough bread, Abhishek told him to stop bothering us.


We sat down a few meters further and exchanged our life stories. It felt surprisingly comfortable chatting with him. He invited me for Diwali to his house, we checked trains, and that was it: I was going for Diwali to Bagaha! We were in different train compartments and would reconnect the next morning. Meanwhile I chatted with Arpita, a wonderful girl I met that booked the same train cabin as me.

Before going to Bagaha, I was doing my research in Arogya Mandir, a health ashram by the revolutionary Vithal Das Modi (this will get a separate blog!).

That weekend I went on the Vande Bharat to Bagaha, where I found Abhishek and his father. They drove me to his house. In no time, I had met his entire family, who were lovely. The person who fascinated me most was Abhishek’s grandfather, who was reading the Gita and other smriti books in a little shed in front of the house. He had given all this land that he had bought relatively cheaply from the Britishers, when they suddenly had to leave in 1947… Since he couldn’t pay everything in one go, he even still transferred money after they had long left (unimaginable now!). For several years now, he had fully devoted himself to God. The family and I cooked together, held pujas together, made flower rangolis, lit diyas, and much more. The hospitality was, in every sense, overwhelming.


The next day we explored Gandhi’s ashram, where he began his first Champaran Satyagraha against unfair indigo trade, and then visited some remaining Ashoka Pillars with Abhishek’s uncle. Quite soon I had to leave as I had already booked a journey to Ahmedabad from Ayodhya.


Before arriving at Ahmedabad, I stopped by the new Ram Mandir, at the site believed to be the birthplace of Lord Rama. The Ram Mandir has only recently been officially completed (25 Nov 2025). There had been tension around its construction, as it had followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992.


In Ahmedabad I was welcomed in the beautiful family of Jagdip Mehta, a family of musicians who did performances together, and the twin daughters did regular national and international tours. The “heritage home” that they live in is a stunning house that the family renovated around 2008, featuring a 16th-century Italian-designed ceiling in front of the room I was sleeping in! My days in Ahmedabad shifted between visits to the archives at Sabarmati, with its wonderful archivists (separate update!), and time with the Mehta family. We ate together, cracked Diwali fireworks, played card games, and sung devotional songs. Especially the youngest, Shivaj, a big fan of the YouTuber Mr. Beast, was such a lively character with a promising future ahead of him!