Deepak Arora

The more I travel, the more I realise every country sells a fantasy from the outside. The West sells order, efficiency, privacy, personal space. And for a while, especially when you first begin travelling, it feels intoxicating. You start believing geography is the missing piece of happiness. Then somewhere around day 10, the gloss wears off. The streets are cleaner, yes. The systems work better, yes. But life can also feel strangely distant. Predictable. Quiet in a way that slowly starts feeling lonely instead of peaceful. India, on the other hand, is overstimulating to the point of absurdity. We complain about the traffic, the noise, the chaos, the pollution, and often rightfully so. But underneath all of that is a kind of emotional density that is hard to replicate anywhere else in the world. Nothing here is subtle. Not the love, not the interference, not the ambition, not the drama, not the joy. I used to think I wanted to leave India permanently. Now I think I just wanted access to the world. There’s a difference.