January 8, 2025

The Questions of Day-to-Day Life

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when coming to India, I am not sure any of us did. But I found some things shockingly familiar personally. The tendency to put Ganesha statues everywhere was something many Thai people did that was comforting to me. The markets, haggling, and all the street carts were mildly nostalgic for me, if not just for some slight variations. With this familiarity, I came to ask myself more, “why did things in India turn out the way they did?”, perhaps to help bridge better the connections I see between India and the county of my family.

I came to concern myself with these kind of questions during the scavenger hunt, me and my teammates were walking to one of the big malls, and we had just seen a person setting up street flags while standing on a wheeled platform. There were maybe one or two people gripping the platform, seemingly preventing the platform from rolling down the street. I made a joke that USA OSHA regulators would have a field day here, but it made me wonder, what history shaped Indian work practices? What happened in the past that made this practice acceptable, or perhaps these different regulations, is what allowed the city to succeed as it has? This line of thought continued when I went to the art market a few days ago. On the Ubers there and back, I kept noticing signs that told people to obey traffic laws, which honestly made me laugh considering how many people I seen who don’t even use turn signals. But it works, somehow, but why? What conditions made this the reality, or perhaps what made it the only possible reality?

Recently, we made a visit to Biome, an organization that works on water purification. Biome works with local governments to transform waste water into purified drinking water. Using advanced machinary and aquafiers, they detect pollutants in waste water before purifying it and supplying a local town that use to be drought-prone with the new purified water.

After that visit to Biome, I wondered about questions of logistics, how did this organization coordinates between its government and the various companies it orders supplies from, and what practices informed the decisions made? I can recognize now that I seek to understand the little moments of everyday life, of how small, perhaps mundane stories of everyday people contribute created and manifest in the city we witness now. Knowing this now, I would continue my curiosity by visiting a museum at some point to learn some history and understand the more subtle, subconscious influences.

By
Chanwit