My Roommate the Lizard & Other Tales from India...

I finally had a world adventure of my own this month: first solo international trip in many years, while kids stayed home with Dad and Grandma. My visit to India immediately transported me out of my comfortably established routine in the United States to the completely different rhythm of another part of our world.

Sharing a few impressions:
 
Nature and people must share space: I quickly recognized that the room I was occupying at our family farm in India was NOT my own, and I would have to make peace with the 2 lizards who had made their home there long before I moved in. I REALLY dislike lizards (and still carry the scars of discovering one in my drinking water jug in Singapore a few years ago!) But this room was their space after all. I studied their movement patterns for days, so I could sleep at night without fear that I would  wake up to a lizard on my pillow! I had no choice but to coexist with my reptilian roommates...
 
Where tech does NOT yet rule… While the rest of the world (including Indian tech centers like Bangalore) race ahead with tech innovation and integration, some places like rural Uttar Pradesh where I was, still don’t have basic infrastructure like stable electricity and internet connectively to jump on that bandwagon. The upside? Kids still play the old fashioned way: climbing trees, kicking around footballs, playing hide and seek, and adults work and socialize together without the distraction of devices. Look at this market scene I visited: teeming with people, but not a single smart phone!
 
Growing food is a lot of work and risky business! It was wheat harvest time in northern India when I arrived, and I watched in awe as the combine machines cut, stripped and sorted the wheat kernels from the wheat stalks in minutes, drastically reducing the harvest time compared to what it would take with manual labor. But even then, an unexpected rainstorm almost ruined the pile of wheat kernels piled high in the collection area waiting to be bagged (by hand) and taken to the factory. Months of hard work potentially lost in minutes!
 
How do THESE children prepare themselves for the world of tomorrow so vastly different from the world they experience today? Pooja and Aysha (pictured above) are full of promise and potential, as all kids are. They could become farm laborers like their parents, or take another path... With full mechanization and automation of manual labor almost a foregone conclusion, where does that leave all those who need work in this country of 1 billion+ people, where labor is plenty and jobs are scarce?

​As usual, my travel experience raised more questions than answers, and reminded me how much I appreciate the chance to step out of my routine for a moment and connect to another place, and another reality, on our planet.