I have heard it said that there is always this moment that India introduces herself to you. A sound, a smell, or a sight, which sits, burned in the memory. Your ‘India moment’. I remember mine. Stepping out through the sliding doors of the air-conditioned airport terminal, and into a wall of thick, heavy heat. Still recoiling from the sheer punch of the intense humidity and without a moment to catch my breath, we were descended upon by an army of taxi drivers. All dressed in identical khaki uniforms, hair greased down in side partings, their lips and teeth stained red with betel nut, all hustling, each beckoning us toward their taxi. It was still early morning in Bombay and after the nine-hour flight, I was in a daze. My eyes slowly scanned across the chaotic sea of people, taxis, and luggage. The noise, the shouting, the heat, the smell of exotic skin oils. Patchouli, then Sandalwood, then something else, spicy, sweaty, sickly sweet. The sheer intensity of activity and madness all around me was completely overwhelming to my fourteen-year-old mind.

And then it happened. To my immediate right was a big neatly stacked pile of bricks. Maybe ten-foot-wide, ten-foot deep, and eight-foot-high. I noticed a trickle of water running down the side, splashing onto the floor. My dozy eyes followed the water up to the top of the pile. There, crouched down on her haunches, sat an old woman, wrapped in a tatty green and red sari. Her deeply wrinkled skin and hollow cheeks marked her as someone who had endured a long, hard life under a merciless sun.

In her frail, bony hand, she held the end of a hosepipe from which dribbled a trickle of water. Slowly, she passed the hose back and forth, sprinkling water evenly across the pile, keeping them damp so they wouldn’t crack in the heat. We looked at each other. She held me with her dark, tired eyes. Her expression was that of one who had long since relinquished any desire, any hope of a life beyond simple survival.

“Yes.” said her eyes, turning her gaze into a voice in my head.

“Yes, this is what I do, this is what’s become of me and this is what becomes of those like me. A nobody, nothing more than a support system for a hosepipe.”

Her eyes dropped away and I was left absorbing the scene. I watched for a few more seconds, this one life lost in a billion faces. That was how this intense and astonishing country introduced itself to me. Through the eyes of a tired, old, un-touchable labourer. My India moment.