The first of my Letters from India. Why I love India. Jasper Reid, Delhi resident, Indophile, entrepreneur and one of four generations to live and work on the subcontinent
Namaste. Hello, this is Jasper Reid and this is Letter from India. In the first of a series of podcasts I'll be doing on India. I'd like to talk about why I love India, why I live in India why I've lived in India a few times and in my life. My father loved India. His father worked in India too. So there's a family thing. They're all quite separate, disconnected stories. But perhaps the first thing to say is it's, it's kind of in the blood a little bit. I'm Irish, and English, really by, by background by ethnicity. But these days, I increasingly feel that I'm also a bit Indian. And maybe that's a good place to start. Because India is sort of all things to all people. That's partly because it's huge. 1.4 billion people (maybe more) 26 states 3000-4000 years old, some of the oldest civilizations in the world can be found in India, the Indus Valley, Varanasi, even Delhi itself. So really, it has enormous pedigree in terms of, of people, and the idea of India isn't anything other really then an idea of people being together in whatever shape or form, the Republic of India, of course, was created in 1947, when the princely states were pushed together into a republic, a unified country. But that was the first time that had ever happened before that in history, of course, India belong to countless tribes, I think there are 250 languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent alone. So it's a place where really anybody can fit in. And it's a place that appeals to people who, who love people, and who are on a journey to find themselves, which is sort of what I'm doing to an extent. So it's in the blood a bit. It's a place for everybody, not just Indians. And in future shows, I'll talk about the idea of Indians and what that means On the people front, and staying that it's, of course, the greatest crush of humanity, in a way, that the world has ever seen. I mean, the population of India has trebled. Since the 1960s, and now is growing at an extraordinary rate, I think it's forecast peak at 2 billion people. And the density of India is as dense as a place like Israel, or a place that the UK So it's huge, it's very densely populated. And because of that, is an expression of all life really. And it's a place where people mingle on a scale and with a proximity that you seldom see anywhere in the world. It's, of course a place famous for enormous contrasts. And of the 1.4 billion people we of course, have, the very richest and the very poorest people on earth as well. And it's that press of people, it's that diversity, it's that being alongside your fellow man that is in my heart, really.To the extent sometimes when I find myself back in my home country, the UK, or Ireland, I feel that it's a place that's impersonal sometimes. I mean, you can't generalize about these things. It's just the contrast is so very great. I think also what I think about India, and again, it's people it's, it's a young country, it's an astonishingly young country, two thirds of the country are under the age of 30 years old. You know, that's, that's 900 million people. And, again, when I find myself in my home country, where the demographic isn't as unfavorable as places like Japan, or or, or Germany, it feels very old. Our children when we go back, they say, 'mama, papa, everyone looks so old'. So its youth is an exceptional and an exceptionally attractive thing about India. And in the sense that it's both very young. And of course, one of the oldest civilizations on on earth again, the contrast is an impressive thing. It's the newest country and yet it's the oldest country. It's not even really a country. So that's something about people. I think the next thing I really wanted to reflect on is that it's a place of great spirituality. It's famously a place of great spirituality. But again, it's a place where many religions, faiths, beliefs, lack of beliefs exist, cheek by jowl, and it's a place of enormous tolerance. While the Christian missionaries and other other faiths look to convert the people of the subcontinent the larger faiths here the face of Hinduism, the Muslim faith and, and Buddhism, you know, never sought to convert they sought to accommodate. And so again it's the togetherness of India, that that springs to mind; so it's spiritual, but it's ecumenical in that sense as well. It's embracing of different faiths to have all these people in a very spiritual place. And then, of course, you know, logically, and famously, India is, is beautiful, and it's diverse: from the Himalayas, the world's greatest and highest, of course, mountain range and longest and widest down to, you know, the Kormoran coast, the spice coast, the Malabar Coast. It's a country of tremendous geographical, physical, beauty and diversity. We've seen everything here, from deserts, to wetlands, to the Himalayas, we've swam with dolphins in the Andaman Islands. We've been to astonishing cities, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, ancient cities, Bombay, of course, Calcutta. So the people are here, the spirit is here, the the geographic beauty and diversity is here. That's the backdrop. if you like, to why I love India. What am I doing in India? Well, I mean, you can love India, wherever you are in the world, and people have enormous faction for India. I'm here really because of opportunity. And it's, it's a business thing to an extent, but it's more than that. It's a reinvention thing. It's a personal growth thing. And in my opinion, India has more opportunity now, than any place I know of in the world, of course, that's economically to do with a lack of supply and an increasing demand but it's to do with growth too; it's a country that grows somewhere between 5% and 10% annually in terms of GDP, which is an astonishing level of growth, certainly versus the so called mature markets. And where there's growth, there's opportunity, and wherever you are in India, and this is the wonderful thing about the super cycles of India. Wherever you are in India, today, there's a chance to do things, there's also a spirit abroad of positivity and optimism. It's more akin to America than it would be to, to the UK, let's say or parts of Europe, where enterprises not always encouraged. So wherever you go, at this point in the cycle, you will find opportunity. But of course, that's in the context of a country that when the British first arrived in India, the then defined area of India had the highest GDP on Earth. Famously, when the British left they haD one of the lowest GDPs on earth. And so the country swings in these enormous economic cycle cycles, and we're back really at the beginning of another one. And it's akin to being in China, Mainland China, you know, in the early 2000s, or the USA, and the super cycles of the 1950s and 60s, England in the industrial revolution. So, it's a place where you can you can build things: in our case our family are building different things. We're building a restaurant business, I'm building up an amateur (as you can tell!) broadcasting business. And our children are growing up here. So really, those are just some thoughts on why I love India. I'll expand on this in in later shows. The other thing, and the final thing to say and this is something about the cycle of life is that we moved here with our children, Elsa, and Cecilia, who are twins, they're 13 now but they were 6 when they got here. And so if I go back to where I started the story with my father and grandfather, you you come to the kind of wonderful realization that you're continuing the story down the generations and so that if you like Is the karma and karma is, as many people know, everything in India