At Twenty, Distance.
At Forty, Depth.
At twenty, I learned how vast India was.
I grew up almost entirely within Tamil Nadu. Theni. Rajapalayam. Madurai. Chennai. Local language. Local rhythms. A contained world.
I knew India was big. I didn’t yet know it was a civilization.
"The Story of India"
A British historian tracing origins not in the North, but in the South. Thanjavur. Madurai. Kerala. Ports, trade routes, temples. Continuity, not mythology.
For the first time, I saw India from the outside, without reduction. Not as chaos. Not as abstraction. But as time held together.
At twenty, my curiosity was outward. I wanted to cross India. Rivers, ruins, temples, the Indus Valley. To see it all.
// Distance felt like understanding.
Twenty years later, the pull is different.
Less
Geography. Maps. Distance.
More
Breath. Attention. Regulation. Healing.
Yoga. Meditation. Siddha. Nervous system mastery. Things explored here thousands of years ago—long before they were renamed, repackaged, or validated elsewhere.
At forty, I’m realizing something simple:
"What I once went looking for abroad had been breathing quietly at home the entire time."
India didn’t only map land. It mapped the human interior. Not through belief, but through observation. Not through speed, but through discipline. Not through spectacle, but through time.
Then
Where do I come from?
Now
What did we already know?
I don’t feel the same urge to cross the country anymore.
The movement now is inward.
Not toward answers. Toward steadiness.
Toward inhabiting what was always here.
This is not a return. It’s a recognition.