As India goes to polls to elect yet another Prime Minister; an old PM, long dead and barely remembered in his own country has pride of place in the Uzbek capital.

Shastri Monument, Tashkent, wasn’t in our itinerary. But when I asked our guide if he knew where it was, he said, “Lal Bahadur Shastri, of course! Now that you have seen my King (Amir Timur), I’ll take you to see your’s.”
In Tashkent, Shastri not only has a monument, but a street named after him. Leafy, spotless and bordered by seasonal flowers, the monument is lit up in the evenings.

Tashkent is plagued by many ills; rising inflation, earthquakes, the ghosts of a Soviet past and an uneven economy. It is certainly not the prettiest of metropolis. But it is a city with a huge heart. The love it has shown a foreign Prime Minister who came to sign a treaty in January, 1966 and died in the middle of the night, is exemplary and without parallel.

For this alone, Tashkent will forever remain special.