While in his 20s, my father Raj Poonia often forgot to write home to his family.
Somewhere in a Moscow dorm in the early 1980s, his letters sat unfinished while my grandfather Hari Singh Poonia grew concerned about his son from a small village close to the Thar Desert region of Rajasthan, western India.
“We have not received your letters for a long time,” Hari Singh writes in one dated April 25, 1980. “Everyone remains worried at home. Your mother and grandmother talk about you often.”
A few weeks ago, I received the translations of these 45-year-old letters and viewed them for the first time while sitting at the airport on my way to Salt Lake City from Phoenix.
The circumstances are different but the story remains the same: a family learning how to stay together despite the distance.
Hari Singh in his letter continues that Raj’s younger brothers wonder if he got trapped in a machine and was hurt or injured; meanwhile, no one had informed the family about Raj, who was studying abroad in Russia on a government scholarship.
“But I said that this will not happen because Rajendra does not even go near such machines,” my grandfather writes.
“Well, everyone was satisfied with my response, but people ask why the letter does not arrive.”
In over 25 such correspondences, Hari Singh, a teacher in rural India and a father of six, urged his son to write back as a duty and a sign of love.
He also imparted wisdom on how to live a proper life, viewing hardship as an inevitable part of life.
I never met my grandfather — he passed away in 1990, years before I was born.
Besides my familial ties and the stories I’ve been told, these letters are my only tangible link to him.
“Like last year, this year too, the crop is not as good. Time will pass in great suffering,” he wrote in another letter dated Sept. 20, 1980.
India then and now
Hari Singh speculated the family would survive on the millet grain and the livestock would eat buttermilk and gram flour that year. But there would be no straw for the camels and “no money to buy it either.”
“You can adapt yourself as you wish. We will support you; we have complete confidence in you. Whatever you learn should be for the benefit of society.”
— Hari Singh of India, writing to his son Raj Poonia, who was studying in Moscow in 1980
“Farming in India is dependent on the monsoon and rainfall remains uncertain,” he wrote. “In the Bikaner region of Rajasthan, the government supplied electricity but currently it is not used for irrigation. … The village is where you left it almost a year ago. No progress.”
In India, this was the era of black and white television and letter correspondence and life was particularly slow in the countryside.
Over the course of their exchanges, electricity slowly came to their homes and later the fields, but the pace of development disillusioned Hari Singh.
India looks much different now. This young nation, also the world’s largest democracy, is embracing the free market and welcoming innovation at every step.
I had a front-row seat to witness this as part of a trade delegation that traveled from Utah to seven Indian cities, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi, to strengthen ties between the state and the South Asian country and shore up bilateral investments.
This delegation received a theoretical taste of where India stood in the early 21st century during a discussion hosted by the Observer Research Foundation.
This land of “Jugaad,” which translates to “quick fix innovation,” has witnessed a shift in recent years, one expert told Utahns.
“Jugaad doesn’t work anymore,” said Srinath Sridharan, a policy researcher and visiting fellow with the Observer Research Foundation. But there is room for “low-cost innovation,” Sridharan said.
“Because the Indian innovator is saying, ‘How do I become the next Apple? How do I become the next Microsoft?’ And they’re not looking at only India as the market,” Sridharan explained. That conversation took place in Mumbai on Nov 3, the first day of the trip.
At the end of the week, the delegates got a taste of what Sridharan was talking about as they toured T-Hub, the world’s largest innovation campus and startup incubator in Hyderabad.
Speaking to the Deseret News over lunch at Paradise Biryani in Hyderabad, Angela Smith, the COO at the Nucleus Institute, Utah’s central hub for innovation, seemed awestruck by what she saw.
“T-Hub is the closest model for what we’re trying to do in Utah,” she said. Smith is also the managing director of the Nucleus Fund, a $40M early-stage venture fund
This Indian incubator is a government-funded model that maintains partnerships with corporations, governments, educational institutions and innovation hubs around the world.
“It’s kind of like the Harvard of startups,” Smith remarked, noting T-Hub’s 3% acceptance rate. Young entrepreneurs who get accepted are assigned a desk or two and try their hand at running an office alongside other startups.
From a 24/7 gym and cafeteria to a clinic and showers, “it’s an entire ecosystem inside one building and you have everything you need to grind,” the Nucleus Institute deputy director said.
Smith added that “90% of startups fail,” and T-hub takes this into account by structuring their program around the different phases of a startup, supporting these businesses through all the “valleys of deaths.”
Smith wasn’t the only one wide-eyed at India’s technological innovation. All the delegates got a taste of this through the day to day.
The technological advancement is all around. Big shops and small vegetable cart sellers alike accept digital payments now. Airports have face recognition technology that allows travelers to check in simply by walking up to the machine on. Electric rickshaws and e-vehicles are increasingly available on the streets.
The market is also leveraging smartphones and the large labor force to tailor and optimize the shopping experience and meet service demands efficiently.
Take BlinkIt, an online app, for example. It has reshaped India’s retail landscape by bringing grocery consumers online through deals and extremely quick delivery. Among the delegates, the longest wait time for an order was 18 minutes. Other similar apps exist for fast service tasks in industries like beauty and spa.
My reporting on India’s potential to expand its trade partnership with the U.S. came at a time when New Delhi was, and still is, struggling to negotiate down the 50% tariff tax levied by the Trump White House.
Most business folk and academics in conversations with the Deseret News during the trade mission stated they were hopeful that this minor turbulence would pass.
Finding answers in unexpected places
This international tour helped me better understand India but it also came at a time when I struggled to answer some difficult questions. I was creating a life oceans away from not just my family but my culture, faith and heritage. Did one come at the cost of the other?
When I left India 10 years ago to go to college in California, the decision didn’t feel as monumental. Pictures from the day before my flight to San Francisco show an 18-year-old girl with a wide, reassuring smile, giving her friends and family tight hugs and promises of coming back soon and that nothing would change.
Blind faith that good things will happen comes more easily when younger. I thought about my father’s life story: he eventually returned to India from abroad and settled in New Delhi.
I was convinced I could do the same — that my family would never be out of reach.
Realities of building a life so far away eventually set in. The more than 8,000-mile distance from home, the $1,500 long-haul flight and the 12-hour time difference hung over me like a cloud, especially during special occasions and holidays.
For years I’d treated America as a place I might leave if something didn’t work out: a job, a visa, a relationship.
But it all worked out as the job turned into a career and the long-term relationship led to marriage.
The time following my wedding in New Delhi earlier in March this year proved particularly transformative. My husband, Jake, and I had a traditional Hindu ceremony.
When we got back, I felt as if this was it. Our life officially started now. We settled into a quiet routine in our Phoenix apartment with hopes of putting down roots, a change after living in seven different cities over the course of our time together. Both of us felt grounded.
This stable home life, my work and the possibility of building a family here with my husband created a new kind of permanence, one I hadn’t anticipated.
“Here in the country, the summer season is on; dusty winds blow; sometimes there is thunder in the clouds too; but we have become used to this,” Hari Singh wrote in one letter.
It’s as if he is describing the Phoenix summer I thought to myself.
“I do not have full facilities to teach in the village, which makes life feel a bit sad. Otherwise, there is no real trouble, for we have become accustomed to this too.”
My first experience of the Arizona summer felt similar. It forced me to slow down, maybe for the first time in years, and breathe it all in. I spent most of my free time in the pool or writing in a journal, and both felt cleansing as did the more frequent trips to the temple.
By then, I had pursued several notable stories. I traveled to Southern California and spoke to faith leaders about the aftermath of the devastating wildfires.
There, I learned how faith communities were rebuilding from the ashes and helping the neighborhoods around them. I also made a quick trip to Idaho for the Western Governors’ Association conference that Utah Gov. Spencer Cox hosted on “Superabundance.”
The fall was marked by the assassination of Charlie Kirk. As my colleagues reported on the attack from the front lines, I spoke to mourners who visited the Turning Point USA headquarters and paid their respects at Kirk’s memorial.
A few months later, my editor floated the idea of joining the World Trade Center Utah’s delegation to India. I knew the trip would pull me away from my daily reporting in Phoenix, and I worried about leaving the ground-level work and routine that had begun to feel steady.
But something about the invitation felt less like travel and more like responsibility — a chance to see India not as the place I had left behind but as a country that could help me understand my future.
It’s all about context
During the two weeks of the trade mission, I found myself slipping into roles I hadn’t expected. I translated conversations and provided cultural cues for a group of American business and policy leaders encountering India for the first time.
I explained the social norms, like the standard of lateness or the absence of beef from menus, and why innovation looked different here than it does in Silicon Valley. At times, I even helped decipher the Indian head wobble, where one tilts their head side to side to convey a message. It can mean up to seven different things, including a “yes” and a “polite no.”
“Here in the country, the summer season is on; dusty winds blow; sometimes there is thunder in the clouds too; but we have become used to this.”.
— Hari Singh, in a letter to his son in 1980, describing a dry summer in India. His granddaughter, Gitanjali Poonia, living in Arizona, says she can relate
I wasn’t selling a product but the necessary context. India isn’t the easiest place to travel through, I’ll admit. I lectured everyone that the key is to give in to the unorganized chaos.
But even my advice fell flat at times.
In one instance, roughly 10 of us stood in front of a minibus with our large- and medium-sized suitcases. Although there was enough room for everyone to sit, the luggage was a different story.
On brief direction from the driver, an assembly line of politicians, academics and business leaders shuffled a few big bags and all the small ones to the front of the bus and onto all the empty seats.
After everyone was seated, the remaining few in the front wheeled the bags to the aisle. Within five minutes of leaving, I realized that if I didn’t hold on to the mountain of bags beside me, it would topple over onto my head. The driver’s sharp turns guaranteed this outcome. So I leaned my arm into the suitcase and kept it steady.
By the end of this 40-minute drive, both my arms were sore. We checked into the hotel after midnight.
None of the travelers had seen what Goa really looked like.
This beach town was ruled by the Portuguese empire for more than four centuries. Many of the churches and forts were built during this time.
The day after, the delegates toured the Church of St. Francis of Assisi built by the Portuguese in the 17th century.
Goa is predominantly Hindu but it is very much influenced by its Christian heritage, which isn’t common in other parts of India. It is known for its charming and colorful old quarters, narrow gullies, lush surroundings and coconut groves.
And walking around this tourist destination, it was easy to forget the comical bus ride from the airport.
Despite the busyness of everyday life in India, it isn’t difficult to find moments of faith and stillness.
I wrote about stepping into such a moment at the Art of Living campus on the last day of the tour. There, the delegates and I tried a short meditation and watched our bodies relax and our minds ease.
Such instances showed us the historically and culturally rich facet of this South Asian country that exists outside the realms of corporate meeting rooms and mainstream Hollywood narratives.
This democracy is only 78 years old, as one of the delegates, Utah state Sen. Daniel McCay noted in an interview on trade mission.
Muslim powers controlled parts of the country before European nations like Portugal, England and France gained a stronghold. After independence from the British in 1947, Hindus stepped up to rule the country for the first time in centuries.
“The Taj Mahal, being one of the biggest landmarks that the world knows, is a symbol of someone else ruling India,” McCay remarked of his most recent tour to one of the wonders of the world.
It was built during the Mughal era, a period between the 16th and 19th centuries when a dynasty of Central Asian origin influenced the Indian subcontinent.
“You think about what that means for a country to have existed as long as India with its infrastructure and traditions,” McCay said.
He said he views India as a potential collaborator, not a service project.
McCay served a mission in India three decades ago and understood the culture better than I did at times.
His words stuck with me for weeks. Could I now explain this to others? In those moments, it didn’t feel as if India was calling me home. It was asking something else of me altogether — to translate.
As I read my grandfather’s letters and reflected on this trip, I couldn’t help but feel I was where I needed to be.
In his letters, Hari Singh often asked my father to write about his life in Moscow. His questions ranged from “What are the people like?” and “How were the Olympics?” to “What do you study these days?”
As I finished reading each letter, I realized that the task he left for my father felt so familiar: to observe carefully, to translate honestly and to stay in a relationship with the place that made me.
“You can adapt yourself as you wish,” Hari Singh wrote. “We will support you; we have complete confidence in you.”
He further mused, “Whatever you learn should be for the benefit of society.”
Although his words aren’t addressed to me, they helped me find the courage to embrace this beautiful life away from home.