India Redux!

I lived in India for seven years in the 1960s when I was in the Foreign Service.  I returned several times in the 1970s and 1980s to lead Breakthrough Foundation programs.  After that I returned again more than once just because I liked being there.  My last such visit was in 2003.  Now, 14 years on, Sandra and I are preparing for another passage to India.

I’ve been asking myself if I have an agenda for this trip.  I don’t – other than to just be there.  I’ve kept up to date on what’s going on in India, so I’m current, at least from a distance.  I know that the India of 2017 is a very different country than the one I encountered when I stepped off a Pan Am plane in the middle of a hot, muggy night in August 1962.  It had only been 15 years of Independence at that time.

I want to have a direct experience of today’s India – to be open to what has changed and also to see what from the olden days is still in place.  Not to yearn for a long gone youth, but to see how it looks to me now.  I bring a different perspective and in that sense will see with new eyes.

We shall see how this all unfolds.  Stay tuned . . .