A visit to India is a step back in time and a prism into the future. We visited a school in the mountains with the Himalayas as a backdrop. They had no electricity, plumbing, not even a road. The kids either ran up or down the mountain to get to school. Streets in the city are a tightly choreographed amalgam of every imaginable form of transport all honking and playing chicken, but we didn’t see even one accident.
Yes, this is a country that is on the move. We saw Tuk Tuks designed to carry 2 that had 15 people in and on them. We saw women with huge loads of wood on their heads, we saw countless scenes of poor children in the streets that all smiled if your eyes met. The thin passage ways in the shopping districts had scooters and motorcycles bumping and pushing through at an alarming pace and I was in fact bumped by mirrors and handle bars many times. You need to be among the masses to absorb the essence of India.
The spirit of Gandhi inhabits the national psyche as well as the face on the currency. Go there and you’ll come back as I did – a changed person, changed for the better.
