Nabin Desai 1 The air in Nalanda carried a kind of hush, as if time itself had slowed to accommodate the weight of its history. Dr. Rhea Sen stepped off the dusty SUV, adjusting her dupatta against the sun’s fierce glare, and looked out at the crumbling red-brick ruins of the ancient university. Her breath caught—not from exhaustion, but awe. Despite the relentless July heat, she felt a chill ripple through her spine. Nalanda had been a name in her textbooks, a place she’d imagined between brittle pages and archived microfilms. Now it stretched before her like a silent witness,…