Lately, I have been carrying a restlessness that refuses to let me sleep. It sits quietly beside me during the day and grows louder at night. No matter how much I try to distract myself, it returns with the same question:

What will become of this country?

I often wonder if this was how Gandhi felt. Or Vivekananda. Not because I compare myself to them, but because I have begun to understand the burden of loving a nation deeply enough to worry about its future.

I grew up in a small hill town in Arunachal Pradesh. The world, as I knew it then, was gentle. Mountains stood like guardians around us. Rivers flowed without hurry. Life felt simple, almost untouched by the cruelties that seemed to belong to distant places.

Then reality arrived.

There was bullying. Mockery. Body shaming. Hurtful words that lingered long after they were spoken. There were moments that broke something inside me. I learned, as many do, that pain often arrives before wisdom.

I survived. I moved forward. But I carried those scars with me.

What kept me going was faith. Not faith in institutions or governments, but faith in people. Faith in the quiet spirituality that seemed woven into the fabric of this land. I believed that despite our flaws, there was something fundamentally noble about us. Something that would prevent us from losing ourselves completely.

For a long time, that belief was enough.

But the years passed, and the country around me began to feel different.

Everywhere I looked, people were fighting. Race against race. Language against language. Community against community. Religion against religion. Caste against caste. Every difference became a battlefield. Every identity became a weapon.

The divisions seemed endless.

And with every new conflict, I felt a growing unease, as though an old wound was reopening.

That is when he appeared.

Not as a ghost in the traditional sense. Not some frightening apparition from folklore.

It was Gandhi.

Not the man of history books, but the idea of him. He followed me everywhere. When I scrolled mindlessly through my phone, he was there. When I looked away from suffering because it felt too exhausting, he was there. When I convinced myself that someone else would solve the country's problems, he was there.

Watching. Waiting. Asking questions I could not answer.

At first, I tried to ignore him. I drank with friends. He sat across the table.

I smoked. He asked for a puff.

I buried myself in distractions. He stood in the corner, smiling.

Not cruelly. Almost knowingly. As if he could see through every excuse I made for myself.

And somehow that smile was worse than anger. Because it revealed what I already knew. I was running away.

Not from Gandhi. From responsibility. From the possibility that loving a country requires more than complaining about it.

Sometimes I imagine leaving everything behind and travelling across India. Not as a tourist, but as a seeker. To walk through villages and cities. To listen to stories. To understand where this nation hurts and why. To find its soul beneath the noise.

The thought returns again and again. Yet whenever I come close to acting on it, something stops me.

Fear, perhaps. Or uncertainty.

Maybe the realization that once you begin searching for answers, you can no longer pretend the questions do not exist.

So I remain where I am—for now. Caught between movement and stillness. Between doubt and conviction. Between the comfort of inaction and the discomfort of responsibility.

I do not know what I am supposed to do. I do not know when I will begin.I do not know where the road leads. All I know is that the question remains.

And somewhere, in the quiet corners of my mind, Gandhi is still waiting.

Patiently. Watching. Refusing to leave.