sent from: Bombay, India. destination: Venice, California, USA

Cycling through an Indian village, an eclectic mix of rude huts, settlements made of corrugated iron, homes with more elaborate decorations in concrete mixed with others in brick, and tiles of cow dung, which you can see drying in the surrounding fields. It’s a mish-mash that defies any sense of order or logic; the thrill of life and sound of laughter even while people are surrounded by pools of fetid water and mountains of plastic trash that has no home or disposal mechanism. There’s the highest of high-tech, the latest cell phones, mixed with technologies that haven’t changed in centuries. All crowded with children playing cricket, hordes of white-clad villagers drinking tea, and young men on motorbikes. I can’t get my head around how it all works, but it does.