On my way to Seattle earlier this week a gentleman took the window seat in my row. He looked like an Indian but I couldn’t be very sure. We got lucky with an empty seat between us so after initial hellos I retired to my now expanded seat and watching movies. After what felt like 3 hours into the flight, this gentleman turns to me and asks, How much longer to Seattle?. I say 3 more hours, and the man is completely surprised that it was going to take another 3 hours; he seemed legit shocked that it was a 6 hour flight. He even remarked that his ticket said he was going to land in Seattle at 8 (and our flight took off at 5 from DC), and he assumed it was a 3 hour flight. I told him he missed the extra 3 hours in time difference and it honestly felt like he couldn’t comprehend this at all. Back of my mind I am like what the F is going on. How hard can this be!

Then he changed the topic and stuck up a conversation. Turns out he was Syed Ainul Hasan (Yes I googled him at home), and he’s an incredibly accomplished man. For the next 2 hours he talked about all the research he has done about sociology, cosmology and astro physics. He remarked he was an invited guest speaker in DC, Chicago and other universities here so he keeps visiting. He worked with Einstein’s lab in older days and published many papers with them. He talked frigging indepth about Upanishads, Vedas, Mahabharata and other ancient scriptures of India. He talked about so many of today’s discoveries and inventions were hinted at in the books. He talked about marrying scientific disciplines with sociology and humanities. He lamented about how today’s generation has become technology obsessed and not thinking about societal impact of technology. He also quipped how I have forgotten my own Indian history. He spoke multiple languages including Persian with much ease he said.

It was only much later he introduced himself as Hasan Ainul. Then he quipped to me that he was a muslim but he knew more about Hindu scriptures than most people, to which I basically said, you probably knew more than 99.99% of the country. He was an absolute gentleman and offered to send me his papers to read. He took my number, and true to his word he sent me a few of his papers! Because whatsapp sends out his full name, thats when I came to know his full name was Syed Hasan Ainul. And then i googled him to find him on Wiki. At the back of my mind I am like, this is kind of people India’s Hindutva is losing. His kids are all settled here now, and he mentioned about desire to move here at some point anyway but he loved India too much to leave right now. I kept thinking how many more like him has Modi’s India sidelined? Anyway, thanks to him it made my journey to Seattle memorable.