India 2025 [Birds and Nature]

Wherever we travel, if we pause long enough to look closely, we discover that we are never alone. Every place is a shared space—an inheritance of wind and water, of birds stitching their paths across the sky, of lives that have been unfolding long before our own footsteps arrived.

It is a kind of arrogance, I’ve come to feel, to imagine we can claim a piece of land or a stretch of water. These places are already spoken for by those who have always lived there. Our task is not to possess them, but to make room—to acknowledge their presence, to let them continue.

Returning to India after six and a half years, I see how profoundly the landscape has changed. Yet beneath the new roads and rising buildings, the older, quieter world still waits to be recognized. It reminds me, again, of the responsibility we carry: to notice, to honor, and to keep creating space for all who share this ground with us.