Terra Cognita

🗓 posted Aug 24, 2026 by Josh Erb
🔢 1216 words
🏷
a dispatch from: Mumbai, Maharashtra

I've been nurturing, but not really articulating, a pet theory about the material impacts on a person that come from living abroad. We are, whether we like to admit it or not, part of the matter that makes up the material world. In order to live, we ingest and metabolize the edible and breathable matter that surrounds us. Ipso facto, if a person spends a non-trivial amount of time ingesting and breathing in air on the other side of the world, they are not just undergoing emotional and cultural changes, their embodied existence changes materially.

Of course, the reason I haven't said this out loud to anyone up til now is because it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The air we breath and the water we drink is part of a vast, global-scale circulatory system. Because of global markets, the food we eat is not necessarily from the same soil we are occupying. We are material creatures, yes, but the truth of this materiality has little to do with borders or imagined community.

As of two weeks ago, I've lived in Mumbai for more than two years. Looking back at my initial posts from when we first arrived in 2024, I can say definitively that my time in India has changed me mentally, emotionally, and physically. Of course, that's also just the contingent nature of a life lived linearly isn't it? Every day that I wake up and move through the world I am changing it and it is changing me.

We'll be packing up and moving out of Mumbai in about 2 months. So chances are high this will be my last blog post with the #india tag. Here are some some disorganized thoughts and impressions to mark the occasion.

Even though we've lived here for 2 years, our being here on a diplomatic post means that we've been in a fairly hermetic bubble, culture-wise. Despite this, there are a few things that have rubbed off. For instance, I find myself unconsciously waggling my head when I want to indicate agreement with someone.

I still don't speak Hindi, but I have become more fluent in Indian body language and I'm better at knowing when to say "theek hai" or "nahin" when someone is talking to me.

When I'm at a store and two employees appear at my elbow to hard sell me on something, I no longer recoil with discomfort. I even sometimes find it useful.

I've gotten a bit too comfortable with the entrenched class structures and my de facto place up near the top of them.

When I am in an uncertain situation, I've learned that unearned confidence will get me a long way. I have told security guards and airport workers that "they are mistaken" and watched as they've let me bring an item or use an entrance that I probably shouldn't have been allowed to use.

We have a full-time nanny and a housekeeper who comes three times a week to help us cook and clean the apartment. We pay them well compared to local standards — so much so that our apartment neighbors have complained about diplomats and expats in the building paying too much, because it "emboldens" their house help to ask for more money — but that doesn't change the fact that I can cover the cost of this monthly help with only 4 or 5 hours of freelance software work at my standard rate.

It's impossible to ignore the pyramid of misery which organizes daily life here, but somehow the prick of it on my conscience has become duller. I recognize the faces of the beggars who tap on my car window when I'm stuck in traffic. I'm no longer surprised to see auto-rickshaw drivers sleeping in their vehicles when I walk through the neighborhood late at night or early in the morning. I no longer feel weird when service workers or strangers call me "sir" despite my being obviously younger than them.

I haven't really been left alone for this entire 2 year stretch. Even now, writing this blog in my home office, I can hear and see a team of two dozen construction workers outside my window at work on a high rise that each week gets one floor closer to obstructing my view of the city.

You don't really see the sky that often in Mumbai. During monsoon it's covered in dark, gray clouds. Even when it's not raining. During pollution season it's a gray smudge. When the sky is clear, it means it's probably too hot to go outside.

I've only seen the moon in the night sky two times since we've been here. But maybe that's just a sign I haven't gone outside at night enough.

We had another son this year. We stayed in India for the pregnancy and birth. There were too many cultural quirks and surprises over the course of this experience to record in this post. Now he is 3 weeks old and having trouble napping during the day because of all the construction noise pollution around our apartment.

I'm now pretty acclimated to "invisible" infrastructure being out in the open and haphazardly arranged. Electrical, telecom, internet wires all outside and above ground. Draped across the corners of buildings and looped and knotted over streets in a tangle. Sometimes running along the ground. Cell service being provided by an array of transponders scattered across high rise rooftops or propped up haphazardly on makeshift towers that run along the city's main roads.

Technology is also its own sort of bubble. While I've read the country's English news publications from time to time, my social media and RSS feeds continue to skew toward Americans writing and posting about America.

I've also stopped noticing the frenetic visuals of all the Indian apps I use. Information is chaotically stacked, cluttering the screen, crowding into view and desperately vying for attention.

India has also been a very enthusiastic adopter of generative AI. For my first son's birthday last year he was gifted poorly written children's book with lifeless illustrations that didn't make any sense in relation to the story. At a mall in our neighborhood, a 20 feet tall screen regularly features event notices with generated visuals. When our second son was born, before we were discharged, the hospital gave us a diet guide pamphlet for my wife with generated fruits and smoothies on the outside cover. I haven't become numb when it crosses my path, just less surprised.

So this is it. The final two months. India has definitely changed me. It's also definitely changed during the time I've been here. I don't think I'll fully understand our time in India until we're a few months into our next post and I have more relative data points to help triangulate the parts of this experience that are common to a diplomatic post and the parts of this experience that were unique to Mumbai.

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