I am writing this from my daughter’s villa, her second home, tucked away in the woods of the Pocono Mountains in the United States. It is so peaceful here that I do believe, if a squirrel sneezes, three deer stop grazing and look up suspiciously.
The roads are spotless. The forests are magnificent. Lake Naomi is beautiful, and every house seems to have discovered the secret of silence.
This morning I decided to do something that should have been perfectly ordinary.
I went for a walk.
Within minutes I realised I was probably committing a social crime. Cars slowed down as they passed me. One lady looked at me with genuine concern, as though she was wondering whether I had escaped from somewhere. Another gentleman almost rolled down his window. I was waiting for him to ask, "Sir, are you lost? Or has your car refused to speak to you this morning?"
That was when I realised something.
Here, the cars seem to do all the walking.
Back home in India, the roads may have potholes large enough to deserve postal addresses, but people still walk. We walk to the corner shop. We walk to buy vegetables. We walk to visit neighbours. We walk because somebody shouted, "Come over for tea." We begin a walk to buy milk and return carrying vegetables, newspapers, two packets of biscuits and enough neighbourhood gossip to keep television news channels employed for a week.
Walking in India is not merely exercise.
It is community.
America has taught the world the value of convenience. Distances here are vast. Cars are not luxuries. They are necessities. Everything works with astonishing efficiency, and one cannot help admiring that.
But somewhere, I wonder whether convenience has quietly begun replacing connection.
Then I looked around and realised something else.
We do not need America to become India, nor India to become America.
We need the best of both.
Let America keep its discipline, its cleanliness, its respect for rules and its breathtaking public spaces. Let India hold on to its noisy friendships, spontaneous conversations, neighbours who still ring the bell without making an appointment, and communities that instinctively gather when someone is in need.
As I walked back through the silent woods, another car slowed beside me. The driver smiled, waved and drove on. I smiled back.
I watched some deer grazing on the front lawns of a neighbour’s home, while a squirrel frolicked nearby, and as I looked at the happy scene, I wondered whether this is where it all begins.
Not by choosing one culture over another, but by borrowing the finest habits from each. Because civilization is never built by just one culture or one religion.
It is built by the integration of many...!
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