Back to the homeland

August 13, 2017

I just got back from another trip to India. Unlike my earlier trip where I was in Delhi for 4 days, this one was much longer – 14 days. This time I visited Thane, my hometown and spent time with my extended family after 3.5 years. It was great to connect with my family again. Like all other trips to India this one also had its ups and downs. The downs of the trip – family drama, stomach issues, sanitation problems. The ups – drinking lots of tea, eating lots of food, shopping for everything from kurtis to PJs to bedsheets and many more!

I was surprisingly refreshed by the time I landed almost 24 hours from my time of departure. I slept for about 10 hours on the plane and thankfully the middle seat was empty, which made the 15 hour plane ride that much more pleasurable. The next 13 days of the trip were a mix of spending time with family, shopping in the old part of Thane as always, eating yummy food, visiting temples, exploring Bangalore, and going to family friends Southern India style wedding.

Here are to 8 highlights from the trip (in no particular order)!

Eating authentic Maharashtrian style vada pav! I’d been craving this for months!
Drinking delicious tea in the perfectly sized cup
Visiting our family temple in a small village on the coast. I love the peace and quiet of small villages, seeing the simplicity of life and all the vegetation and nature that exists in the countryside. It’s great to get away from the overwhelming hustle bustle of cities.
Spending time with my aunt and cousins in Bangalore including seeing lions and tigers in the Bannerghetta safari and hailing OLAs.
Experiencing a Kannada wedding including eating food on a banana leaf
Traveling on the Bangalore metro!
Going to the heart of Mumbai using all modes of public transportation – train, bus, taxi, and rickshaw. If you can get on and off a train during peak times, you’re the boss!!!
Street shopping and watching my cousin bargain.

India continues to go through a dramatic transformation. Since the last time I visited, Uber and OLA have become a preferred mode of transportation. Sure train and rickshaws still exist but traveling in larger groups in comfort is becoming easier. The metro in Bangalore is as modern as you can get. It’s secure, safe with guards patrolling the stations, CLEAN, and easy to navigate. NYC subway though vast has a long way to go before it can be updated to the same levels. Google Maps is making it easier for non-locals to navigate the streets of Indian cities. Though street signs and following traffic rules and patterns has yet to improve.

And almost every person has a cell phone. The country seems to have skipped the landline and corded phone era. With click of a button or swipe on a screen, everyone has increased access to the world. Thomas Friedman was correct in saying “The World is Flat.”

The one area where India absolutely needs to improve and is very important to me is sanitation. The concept or lack of it is what makes the streets filthy. Education is at the core of the society and of of the only ways to get a better life, but having a clean and healthy environment to live in is absolutely important and it will do the country wonders to teach this to people from all strata of life from an early age. It saddens me to see families living in shacks right next to a pile of garbage with rats and mosquitos milling about. What’s the point of building an ultra modern apartment building and having a clean environment indoors when you look out the window or walk on the sidewalks, you see trash and health hazards outside?

But I digress…

What I admire most of all is how content and happy people are with their lives (from what I saw at least). Instead of crying over the challenges they face in their daily lives, of which there are many, people face adversity head on and have hope that sunrise will make their lives a little better. And from what I have seen in the last 25 years that I’ve been visiting the country, it sure has. Something that I can bring to my life.