A Seat in the Back, A View of the Country

Some journeys are meant to be forgotten the moment the destination is reached. They are undertaken merely to get somewhere else—functional, transactional, and quickly erased from memory. And then there are rarer journeys that linger. They stay with you, long after the luggage has been collected, the receipts archived, and life has resumed its familiar pace.

A few weeks ago, I found myself on what I assumed would be the usual kind of journey—an unremarkable Uber ride to the Bangalore airport after a short trip. The app warned me of a nearly two-hour drive. I braced myself for the predictable ordeal: half-sleep, half-scrolling, punctuated by flyovers and the low-grade irritation of mid-morning departures. The plan was simple—arrive, endure, forget.

The Uber arrived almost exactly on time—already an unexpected mercy in this city. The car was clean, the music low, the dashboard uncluttered. As we turned the first corner, the driver greeted me in Hindi. Not the tentative, half-apologetic Hindi many drivers in Bangalore use, constantly gauging whether English might be safer, but a confident, unfiltered Hindi. When I replied in the same register, his face lit up in the rear-view mirror, as though he had stumbled upon a familiar dialect in unfamiliar territory.

“Achha laga, madam,” he said, laughing softly. “Roz roz toot-phoot wali Hindi sun ke aadat ho jaati hai, par apni bhasha sun ke mann halka ho jata hai.” (It feels good, madam. You get used to broken Hindi every day, but hearing your own language lightens the heart.)

It was a small moment, but not an insignificant one. After days of app cancellations, cryptic in-app hints at higher fares, and the general notoriety of Uber autos (Uber, not Namma Yatri, which at least pretends to play by the rules), this felt like slipping into a pocket of ease. What I expected to be a quiet ride quickly became something else—a near-monologue, yes, but delivered with such warmth that silence would have felt discourteous.

He was in his early twenties, from Jharkhand, and once he started speaking, he didn’t so much converse as reveal himself, layer by layer. Stories flowed easily—about farmland disputes back home, about land that once fed families now trapped between paperwork, debt, and political neglect. He spoke of heartland dacoity not with television drama, but with the weary familiarity of someone who knows how quickly desperation turns criminal when institutions retreat.

“Gaon mein jurm shauk se nahi hota, madam,” he said quietly. “Majboori se hota hai.”
(Crime in villages doesn’t happen out of desire; it happens out of compulsion.)

Gradually, the conversation slipped into the larger story beneath his own—a story of migration that rarely fits neat statistics. He spoke of leaving home not as ambition, but as inevitability. Of villages that raise children knowing they will have to let them go. Cities, he suggested, do not merely attract labour; they absorb hope, ambition, and sometimes regret.

“Gaon se shehar aana sapna nahi hota,” he reflected. “Zyadatar majboori hoti hai.”
(Coming to the city isn’t always a dream. More often, it’s a compulsion.)

As we passed the Hebbal flyover, billboards began their familiar parade—European-named towers promising luxury, gated communities, and carefully worded “investment opportunities”. He gestured towards them, half amused, half resigned. For several kilometres, he spoke about Bangalore’s real estate boom—how land becomes commodity, how migration fuels expansion, how cities quietly build themselves on invisible labour. He needed no data sheets. He had driven these roads daily, watching the city stretch while villages hollowed out behind him.

Listening to him—Nandlal Kumar—felt like having a ringside seat to contemporary India: raw, observational, unscripted. His cadence reminded me of Vikas Bhaiya from Phulera Gaon in Panchayat—that blend of earnestness, wit, and grounded intelligence. Except this was not fiction. This was lived experience, sharpened by curiosity and long hours behind the wheel.

He spoke of exams he had prepared for—the havaldar recruitment among them—which he did not clear. There was no bitterness, only quiet recalibration. Preparation, he said, teaches you more than success sometimes does. His range of reading surprised me—history, polity, current affairs—and the ease with which he connected policy to everyday life was striking. More than once, I thought his grasp of facts and context could comfortably crack several UPSC prelim questions.

At one point, perhaps weighed down by experience, the discussion turned to the judiciary. He paused, weighing his words. “Justice aur judgement mein farq hota hai.” (There is a difference between justice and judgement.)

He spoke of cases that surface briefly in headlines and then vanish, of delays that punish the innocent as much as the guilty. What stayed with me was not the critique, but the disappointment—especially with how easily the educated classes distance themselves.

“Hum sirf debate karte hain,” he said. “Par jinke saath hota hai, unki zindagi wahi atak jaati hai.” (We only debate. For those it happens to, life gets stuck there.)

The conversation drifted to everyday encounters with power: toll booths, arbitrary fines, subtle intimidation. His understanding was not ideological; it was intimate, stitched together from thousands of kilometres and countless small humiliations quietly absorbed.

Migration returned again—not as a problem to be solved, but as a condition to be lived. He spoke of young men who learn new languages, new manners, new silences. Of how cities demand constant adaptation but rarely offer belonging.

“Shehar ka kaam hota hai lena,” he said simply. “Apnana mushkil hota hai.” (Cities are good at taking. Accepting is harder.)

Somewhere between flyovers and toll plazas, I realised I did not want the conversation to end. The journey—usually something to endure—had become quietly absorbing. There was humour, empathy, sharp sarcasm, and a generosity of thought that demanded attention. His listening was as present as his speaking. This was not venting. It was reflection.

Given a stage, a microphone, and encouragement, Nandlal Kumar could hold a TEDx room with ease—not because he had rehearsed answers, but because he had lived the questions. Support, not intelligence or effort, was the missing piece.

As the airport came into view, the journey revealed what it had been all along. A chance encounter had become something richer—a reminder of how much insight travels quietly beside us every day, unnoticed. Of how easily we underestimate the depth, humour, and ethical clarity of those we label “drivers”, “migrants”, “service providers”.

As I stepped out, exchanged goodbyes, and wheeled my luggage towards the terminal, I realised I was carrying more than a boarding pass. I was carrying a view of the country—seen not from headlines or reports, but from the back seat of a moving car.

Some journeys don’t just take you somewhere. They stay.

This one will, for a long time.