When I was in high school at La Martiniere, we used to see a rickshaw wala waiting to pick up a student who would sit and read Robin Cook and other English books. He would wait a little distance away from the cars and crowd, and I only saw him if either of my parents came to sign me out and pick me up, and we walked up Rawdon Street, on our way to some restaurant. I still remember his face. I remember how I used to battle with a ball of tears in my throat, fighting not to have it come out—every single time. In my near-dementia mental state of now, I have no idea why I remember that, but I do.
Irfan’s Story Reveals the Invisible Talent India Keeps Missing
I have watched Mohammad Irfan’s interview with The Lallantop more times than I care to admit. Every time it ends, I sit there in silence. Every time, my eyes well up. It is one of those rare moments when your heart swells with pride and breaks with regret in the same instant. Because I feel extremely guilty of my privilege and that of our kids and wonder why it has to be so.
What extraordinary young people this country produces. And what an extraordinary talent we have for spectacularly failing them.
Irfan doesn’t speak like someone trying to become famous. He speaks like someone who has spent years carrying questions inside him, polishing them in solitude, until they became convictions. His words are measured, thoughtful; his sincerity almost disarming.
And he’s so emotional too; it’s as though it’s all oozing out of him and he can’t help himself control it. In an age where noise passes for intelligence and outrage is rewarded more than insight, here was a young man reminding us that dignity still has a voice.
I could not stop wondering where he had been all this time. How many buses had he travelled in without anyone noticing him? How many evenings had he spent reading while the rest of us were busy scrolling through our phones? How many dreams had he folded away because life demanded something more urgent than dreams?
Then another thought arrived, and it hurt even more.
Why Exceptional Students Still Depend on Chance to Be Discovered
Had the students not occupied Jantar Mantar, had the cameras not turned towards them, would we ever have known Irfan existed? If not for the accident of the reporter catching him, would we have discovered him at all? Or would he have remained one more invisible citizen in a country astonishingly skilled at overlooking its finest minds?
That, to me, is the real tragedy.
The interview was not merely about one articulate young man. It was an indictment of our imagination as a nation. Even as of this last week, if I delved just outside my algorithmic echo chamber, there are many I know who are talking about how the kids are getting unnecessary attention, and I see schadenfreude, the I-told-you-so, how we are just encouraging these good-for-nothing youngsters who want everything on a platter.
We have somehow convinced ourselves that talent rises on its own, that brilliance always finds its way to the top. It is one of the most comforting lies we tell ourselves. Talent does not always rise. Sometimes it drowns quietly beneath poverty. Sometimes it is buried beneath responsibilities. Sometimes it simply grows tired of knocking on doors that never open.
A society is not judged by how it celebrates its successful people. It is judged by how many extraordinary people it never even notices.
Watching Irfan, I was reminded of something Rabindranath Tagore once feared—that education without freedom merely creates clerks, not citizens. Here, before us, stood a citizen in the truest sense of the word: curious, compassionate, informed, fearless enough to ask questions and humble enough to listen. Yet I found myself asking the most painful question of all.
Every Extraordinary Success Is Also an Indictment of the System
Why should someone like him feel exceptional? Why, after nearly eighty years of Independence, are we still astonished when intelligence emerges from hardship? This should be ordinary. Every child, regardless of the family they are born into, should have the opportunity to become everything they are capable of becoming. That should have been the promise of Independence. Not merely the lowering of one flag and the raising of another. Why should birth still dictate destiny?
Why must we still celebrate exceptions? We break out in applause when one brilliant young person breaks through impossible barriers. We call it inspiring. We get more interviews and revel some more. We write newspaper profiles.
But every exception is also an accusation. It quietly asks us – if we care to listen – about the thousands who never broke through. The thousands who were just as intelligent, compassionate, articulate and deserving, whom we never met because our country has no space for them.
Another quality about Irfan stayed with me long after the interview ended. It was not merely his intelligence. Intelligence is common enough. It was his gentleness. His refusal to dehumanise those with whom he disagreed. His belief that ideas still matter. He refused to surrender either to hatred or to despair.
Where does such grace come from? Certainly not from privilege. Perhaps from struggle.
Perhaps from hope itself.
Whatever its source, it felt like a reminder that India’s greatest wealth has never been hidden beneath mountains or buried under oceans. It has always lived inside its ordinary people.
And yet we spend so little time looking for it.
We build statues taller than mountains, but not enough schools worthy of our children.
We celebrate economic growth while millions of gifted young people like Irfan still wonder whether anyone will ever hear their voices.
We measure progress in highways (which turn to nothing, soon enough, thanks to rampant corruption and lack of political will )and airports, while forgetting that the truest measure of a civilisation is whether it recognises the quiet brilliance sitting unnoticed in its smallest towns and poorest homes.
That is why I could not celebrate this interview without also grieving. It’s fabulous that Lallantop ensured (or it was a fluke) that Irfan had finally been heard. But isn’t it somewhat devastating, the thought that he needed a protest to be discovered?
Why do we require an upheaval to notice its brightest young citizens? Why aren’t there classrooms to notice them, universities where they can go to be nurtured? Why can’t our governments invest in them? Why can’t our country believe in them long before they become viral?
The India We Need Exists in Millions of Unseen Young Minds
There are countless Irfans we shall never meet. (I have already told you about one in my home). The 10-year-old server in a tea shop who can calculate the bill of ten tables in minutes when the customer service folks in high-end stores can’t calculate 2+2 without looking at the screen. Some gazillions will never stand before a camera, whose books will remain unread because life demands wages instead of wisdom. This guy and others like him will disappear into anonymity carrying libraries inside their minds.
I find it difficult to hope, but strangely, there is hope too. Because now and then, despite every obstacle placed before them, despite neglect, despite indifference, despite a system that too often rewards inheritance over ability, someone like Irfan steps into the light and reminds us of the country we could still become.
Perhaps that is why this interview feels larger than one young man’s story. It is not simply about this one Irfan. Or even the Neha Bora who has shown us how remarkable she is. It tells about the India that exists beneath the India we usually see. The India that is thoughtful, compassionate, intellectually restless and quietly courageous. The India that asks for very little except to be seen.
I only wish we could learn to recognise it before a protest forces us to look.
