Eventually, Kashi became a civilisational capital of India. Poets, saints, scholars, musicians, artisans, and even ordinary citizens helped shape the city. For millennia, seekers and scholars travelled from far and wide in search of knowledge, learning, and even emancipation. Its modern institutions carry that legacy forward. 

A literary festival succeeds when readers leave with better questions about a book. Giving translators a substantive place in the program would add questions about language, interpretation and the work of bringing one readership into contact with another. South Asia's literary stages can acknowledge that work by giving its practitioners a name, a fee and a conversation worth joining.    

The enduring lesson of Mizoram is not that the state won and the insurgents lost. It is that both sides eventually found a political space in which neither needed to win everything. That is the essence of accommodation and perhaps the most enduring lesson Lal Thanhawla’s life offers India.