In 2004, I went to India for work, and I was genuinely excited about it. This wasn’t something I was dragged into—I wanted the assignment. I wanted to see it for myself.

And Bangalore doesn’t ease you in.

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The second you step off the plane, you smell it—exhaust, thick and constant, what passes for air. It hits you immediately. And the noise never stops. Not for a second. It’s a full-on cacophony—horns, engines revving, people yelling, dogs barking. It doesn’t rise and fall. It just exists, all the time.

There’s nothing about it that feels “normal,” and it never pretends to be.

The Challenge

Even the basics I’d always taken for granted—like electricity—weren’t guaranteed. Brownouts were a daily thing. Sometimes more than once a day. You didn’t expect consistency—you worked around the lack of it. We’d schedule Skype calls in the afternoon hoping the morning demand on the grid had passed and maybe the power would hold long enough to get through a conversation.

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t.

That was just part of life there.

There’s nothing about it that feels “normal,” and it never pretends to be.

Getting to work every day felt like its own challenge. Crossing the street is something I will never forget. You don’t wait for a break in traffic because there isn’t one. You step out and start moving, weaving through cars, motorbikes, buses—whatever is coming—because standing still isn’t an option.

You make it halfway, climb or hurdle the center median, and then do it all over again to get to the other side. It’s not smooth. It’s not controlled. You just go.

The Chaos

And the tuktuk rides—those were chaos in motion. Every morning was a near miss. We’d weave through traffic, slipping between a car, five bikes, and at least a couple of cows like it was nothing. Everything missing everything else by inches, somehow working without ever really slowing down.

It sounds insane.

It kind of is.

I loved it.

Not in a romanticized way—just in a this-is-real way. It was intense, alive, and unpredictable. You felt it constantly.

The Anger

But some things stayed with me for different reasons.

In the office, I watched someone get snapped at—told to bring tea in a tone that wasn’t just rude, it was dismissive in a deeper way. Like he didn’t matter beyond the task. I asked about it later because it didn’t sit right.

That’s when I learned what “untouchable” actually meant in practice.

I was told, plainly, that he was from a lower caste. That some people were simply considered less. My coworkers—people I had been working with like it was any other office—explained it like it was normal. Like it was just the structure of things.

That didn’t land as “interesting” or “different” for me.

It made me angry.

Because it wasn’t theoretical. It was right there in front of me, in how someone was treated, how easily it was accepted, how casually it was explained. That disconnect—between what looked like a modern workplace and what was actually underneath it—stuck with me in a way I can’t shake.

The Unforgettable Moment

And then there was a moment I’ve never been able to forget.

On Mahatma Gandhi Road, a woman approached me holding a baby. She asked for money like many people did, but then she lifted the baby toward me in a way that stopped me cold.

I’ve replayed that moment more times than I can count.

When I’m overwhelmed or unsure how I’m going to get through something, I see her.

Maybe she wasn’t offering the child. Maybe I read too much into it. But it felt like she might have been—like she was trying to give that baby a chance at a life she knew she couldn’t provide.

That’s how it landed.

And it never left.

I still see her.

When I lose a job and everything feels like it’s falling apart, I see her.

When I’m overwhelmed or unsure how I’m going to get through something, I see her.

When I was a single mom with a toddler, stretched thin and exhausted, I thought about her more than once.

And every time, the same thought comes through: I am not there.

My problems are real, but they are not that.

The Love and the Longing

Even now, it shows up in smaller ways. When I feel crushed in a crowd, I remind myself—this isn’t India. When the noise around me feels like too much, I remind myself how loud it can be. And strangely, when it’s too quiet, I miss it. I think about all the sound I could be hearing—the chaos, the energy, the constant movement of life.

I miss it more than I ever expected to.

I loved India. All of it. The intensity, the beauty, the parts that scared me, the parts that made me furious.

That trip didn’t give me a neat lesson or some clean takeaway. It just changed how I measure things—stress, discomfort, hardship.

I wouldn’t change any part of it. Not the noise, not the fear crossing the street, not the anger, not the moments that made me uncomfortable.

All of it mattered.

And if anything, it left me with one thought that hasn’t gone away: I want to go back. Not just to see it again, but to show up with something to give. Even if it’s small. Even if it barely makes a difference.

I loved India. All of it. The intensity, the beauty, the parts that scared me, the parts that made me furious.

Because it was real.

And once you’ve seen something that real, you don’t get to unsee it.