Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space.

The Emerald. So I've just landed in Kolkata after 27 hours of travel, and if I had any sense of time at all, I'd probably guess it was around nine at night.

It's three days before a yoga retreat I'm leading is about to start, and I've given myself this time so that I can go visit a particular place, a place I've wanted to see for a very

long time. I've got it all planned out, and if everything goes smoothly, then it should just work.

Except, I've just found out my travel agent couldn't get me on the 6 a.m. train we'd planned on.

So instead of a 4-hour train ride, I'm going to have a 6-hour drive on rural Bengali roads.

And now we've got to leave at 4.30 in the morning.

So my plan to get a good night's sleep is rapidly disappearing,

especially since I had just discovered while going over my travel documents,

that my return flight is booked for the wrong date. So I'm on the phone with Emirates now,

and the representative, whose name is Dickshit, is not very cooperative. In fact, Dickshit keeps me up

till 2 a.m. My full night's sleep has dwindled now to two hours.

The car comes in at 4.30 and we head west out of Kolkata.

By 5 a.m. we're in a traffic jam, which seems to be comprised mainly of massive trucks moving cargo out of the city.

By 5.30, all semblance of road lanes have disappeared and

were weaving in and out of thousands of trucks. Like, I've never seen so many trucks in my life.

I've never imagined that so many trucks could exist. It's all trucks. And our six-hour drive

...