By Upendra Mishra
After the earthquake, life seemed to inch toward normalcy—but only on the surface. Inside, something had shifted, something deep and unsettling. I was still surviving on a hand-to-mouth scholarship, drifting with no real direction. My dreams felt distant, blurred, almost childish.
I had come to this foreign land with grand hopes—of success, wealth, admiration. Like so many others, I dreamed of returning to India triumphant, pockets full, stories richer than gold. Instead, I had nothing to show for myself. Nothing but a few newspaper columns. And even those couldn’t fill the silence of my soul.
My self-worth had collapsed. Ground zero. Maybe I was depressed—maybe I just didn’t have the words for what I was feeling. After the quake, I stopped writing letters home. There were no phones, no easy way to reach out. But truthfully, I didn’t want to. What was I going to say? “I’m alive, but not living”? “I’m here, but I’ve achieved nothing”?
I imagined the whispers of my relatives back in India: “He went abroad, and look at him now.” That shame, imagined or not, hung over me like a storm cloud.
Meanwhile, my family in India had descended into panic. News of the Mexico earthquake had shaken them, but I remained silent. My uncle, desperate, tracked down a close friend of mine from Allahabad University who was then doing a PhD at Northeastern University. Even he couldn’t reach me. I had vanished into myself.
I started wandering through Mexico and parts of Central America. Traveling became an escape, a form of therapy. I immersed myself in Latin American culture, even its politics. Occasionally, I wrote columns to support myself. To my surprise, my work started gaining attention. The News, a prominent English-language newspaper in Mexico City, gave me a regular platform. My takes on Latin American affairs—coming from a young Indian writer—created curiosity, even controversy. Especially among right-wing readers, fervent supporters of Ronald Reagan and his anti-Sandinista policies.
But nothing prepared me for the storm that followed when I turned my pen back toward India.
It was nearing the first death anniversary of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The editor of The News, Roger C. Toll, asked me to write a piece analyzing the repercussions of her assassination, particularly regarding the Punjab crisis. I agreed. I poured myself into the piece, comparing the insurgency in Punjab with the geopolitical events that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. It was speculative, yes—but rooted in history and context. I titled it provocatively: “Will Punjab Become Another Bangladesh?”
The day after it ran, the phone rang.
“You need to report to the Indian Embassy. Immediately.” It was a senior official, someone I had known through the India-Mexico exchange program. His voice carried fury and finality.
That afternoon, I entered the Embassy like a criminal walking into his own sentencing. I was ushered into the office of Indian Ambassador Kershasp Tehmurasp Satarawala—a distinguished civil servant, a former governor, a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, and a man with deep personal ties to the Gandhi family.
He was livid. His calm demeanor had evaporated. His office felt like a furnace.
“How could you, an Indian, write such a thing?” he shouted.
He wasn’t just offended—he was betrayed. I was informed that, as a participant of the India-Mexico cultural exchange program, I was under their authority. He could cancel my scholarship. Impound my passport. Deport me back to India.
In that moment, my dreams collapsed like a paper house in a monsoon. I had come so far—hoping to return home as someone who had made it. And now, I was staring down the very real possibility of returning empty-handed. A failure. I thought of my family. My village. The questions. The shame.
As I stumbled out of the Ambassador’s office, stunned and directionless, I crossed paths with Ms. Madhu Bhaduri, the First Secretary at the Embassy. She gently invited me into her office.
She knew.
She understood that I hadn’t written that article out of malice or rebellion. She saw me not just as a student, or a columnist—but as a scared, searching young man far from home. Her kindness pierced the fog of fear I was sinking into.
“You’ll be fine,” she said.
But the pressure wasn’t over. I was summoned again by the embassy’s Second Secretary—the man who had first called me. He was curt and direct.
“I want a written apology and a retraction of the article. Immediately.”
I walked out, unsure of what to do. Who could I call? Who would help me?
I went to The News and explained everything to Roger Toll. He listened quietly. Then he leaned back and asked, “Would you like to move to the United States?”
I blinked. “What?”
“I can speak to someone at the U.S. Embassy,” he said calmly. “We can get you asylum. You’ll be safe there.”
I had never imagined such a possibility. But it felt like a lifeline. A face-saving alternative to the shame of being dragged back to India as a disgraced scholar.
A few days later, the embassy again demanded my written apology and article retraction. The pressure mounted.
That’s when Ms. Bhaduri stepped in again, like an angel. She summoned me quietly.
“Do not apologize,” she told me, her voice sharp with conviction. “And I know you can’t retract that article. But… can you write another piece—this time highlighting the Indian government’s official position?”
Relief flooded my chest. “Yes,” I said without hesitation.
That compromise saved me. I wrote the second article, respectful and informative, and the tension slowly dissolved. I was allowed to stay. My life returned to a fragile kind of normal.
I never saw Ms. Bhaduri again after that. But I’ve never forgotten her—the first Indian woman diplomat I’d ever met. Her quiet courage. Her empathy. Her belief in second chances.
Years later, while writing this, I googled her. I was moved to learn about her remarkable career and her memoir Lived Stories—a fitting title for someone who helped me hold on to mine.
As the dust settled and I slowly found my footing again, something inside me began to shift. With the threat of deportation behind me, I did what many young people do when they dodge a bullet—we celebrate life, recklessly, ravenously, like it might be taken away again at any moment.
And so, I descended—willingly—into the bright chaos of youth. Mexico City opened up to me like a wild, seductive poem. There were parties that bled into sunrises, loud bars with louder laughter, glasses that were never empty, and warm bodies that tangled with mine in search of something none of us could name. Tequila, music, dancing, more tequila. Names were forgotten even before mornings arrived.
It was intoxicating. It was fun. It was freedom—the kind only your twenties can offer when you’re thousands of miles away from anyone who raised you, from anyone who knew you as a child.
But amid the dizzy haze of indulgence, a quiet ache hummed underneath. It showed up in the silences between songs, in the aftermath of a kiss, in the loneliness that followed even the wildest nights. My soul, while my body was busy chasing pleasures, was chasing something else entirely.
It was intimacy I longed for. Not sex, not company—intimacy. Connection. Love.
And always, always… her.
The pink-dressed girl in jeans from JNU.
Even years later, her image lingered like perfume in a closed room. She lived in my memory like a prayer that had never been answered. I saw her face in every woman I met, every woman I kissed, every woman I left. I wasn’t searching for a person—I was searching for a feeling. The kind of innocent, electric possibility that only first love holds. The kind of love we never really fall out of, just grow around.
I had left India, but I hadn’t left her. She walked with me through the streets of Mexico, a ghost in pink, whispering to my heart that this—this carousel of chaos—wasn’t what I truly wanted.
But I wasn’t ready to listen. Not yet.
Stay tuned for Chapter 16: A New Beginning — Moving to the University of Southern California on a Carnegie Foundation Scholarship
Upendra Mishra, author of the newly released After the Fall — How Owen Lost Everything and Found What Really Matters, is the managing partner of The Mishra Group, a diversified media firm based in Waltham, MA. He writes passionately about marketing, scriptures, and gardening. To learn more, visit www.UpendraMishra.com.
