WHERE I HAVE BEEN – Ep1. INDIA
I wanted to start a new series of posts/ blog where I can talk about the countries that I have travelled to. I am probably the most travelled person I know personally. In my 35 years of work that started at the age of 17, I have been to more than 150 countries. There is already so much written about every country that I am not going to add anything new but then I have my perspective on their fascinating uniqueness to share.
Such a series should however start with India where I was born and did my schooling but haven’t lived or worked there for much longer after that. To be Indian is to be born into a paradox—a beautiful, chaotic, and humbling one. The history and geography bestow a greater responsibility to know almost all about India when you are a Non-Resident Indian like me. This brings us to the most humbling truth for any Indian: No one can know India in one lifetime. You cannot pilgrimage to all its sacred sites, taste every regional delicacy, understand all its festivals, or comprehend the depth of its layered histories and myths. You can spend a lifetime studying the classical dance of south India like my father did, only to realize that the music and dance of another side of India is a completely different universe which will take another lifetime.
But the true magic lies in the people. To be Indian is to have your identity refracted through a prism of countless realities. You share the nation with a fisherman on the Kerala backwaters, a tech entrepreneur in Bengaluru, a businessman in Gujrat, a humble Shikara rower in Kashmir, a tea leaf picker in Assam, a tribal artist in Odisha. Each lives in a different India, each follows a different rhythm, yet all are equally and authentically Indian. Think about it: That is also the source of a liberating, endless curiosity and the appreciation that your own country will always hold more mysteries from you, even if you have travelled to so many others. To be Indian is to be a perpetual student in the world’s most ancient, ongoing, and open university of life. Jai Hind!
Capt Pappu Sastry/ CEO – ASL Dubai
