The Thinking Traveller Life is meant to be lived and you cannot live it at one place alone. So lose yourself to travelling. Travel, and travel often. Getting lost will help you find yourself.

Unlike my previous escapades which took me hundreds of miles away from my home town, this one was just 6 miles away to one of three sanitary landfill sites in Delhi, the capital city of India. I was heading to ‘Jahangir Puri’ to understand a day in the life of people working there.

I reached there at 7 a.m. It was an exceptionally hot day. The sun’s rays were hot enough to pierce through the hardest of metals, let alone the delicate human skin. Even the mighty ‘Atlas’ would have shrugged that day.

I managed to strike a conversation with a lady working at the site. She had the agility of someone in her mid-twenties, but her age was betrayed by her skin which was parched and leather-like as a result of her endless working hours. Despite her drooping shoulders, two missing incisors and a sweaty forehead, she had a smile on her face. Her name was Ruksaan.

“Sardarji (sic)”, she screamed amidst the noise from the bulldozers and backhoe loaders. I shared with her the reason for my visit. “This is not the right time”, she said with an expression of disbelief. “Meet me at 7 p.m. and I will give you a glimpse of my day.” While the left and right hemispheres of my brain were arguing on whether to trust her or not, my heart insisted that I do so.

As promised, I came back at 7 p.m. She was waiting for me with her husband ‘Abdul’ who also worked at the same site. During the twenty minute walk to their home, they told me that they were blessed with two daughters. “They go to school Sardarji.” I could see the Venus-like twinkle in his eyes as Abdul said that. Within minutes of reaching their home, they took a bath and wore the best of their clothes. They looked bright enough to be hosting a grand Indian wedding. Everything about them was new, from their slippers to their clothes and to their new found enthusiasm.

As curious as always, I asked them the reason for this sudden freshness just before going to sleep. “Just as you get up each morning and dress to be your best”, Abdul started, “We look our best when the entire family is together at night time just before going to sleep. You welcome each day with your best, while we do so with our worst as we step out to work wearing dirty and torn clothes. You come back at night simply to sleep, whereas we come home to spend some time together.”

“You see”, Ruksaan added, “your day starts in the morning, while my day starts at night.” I’ll never forget that day when my very perspective of looking at things did a one-eighty.