India, Oct. 1 -- The other day, while walking past my school, I was taken over by a wave of nostalgia, the kind that barges in with muddy boots and an old photo album, demanding to be seen. With surprising clarity, it struck me that it's been 50 years, a full half-century, since I stepped out of those familiar gates as a freshly minted graduate.

Fifty years! Enough time for cities to change, technology to leapfrog, and for my knees to start complaining every time I stand up. I paused at the gate, eyes half-closed, as if trying to tune into a frequency from the past. Sure enough, memories began unspooling.

The first scene was of a thin lad, pedalling furiously on my mother's faithful "lady's bicycle". It wasn't the gallant steed of a sch...