In India, They Ask This First: And It Changes Everything

What if the first question you ask someone reveals everything about your culture? In the West, we open with “What do you do?” It’s automatic, a way to size someone up based on what they produce. But when I was in India, traveling with a backpack through cities like Mumbai, Varanasi, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Amritsar, and Chennai, the first question people asked me wasn’t about my job, it was: “Do you have family?” And that question changed how I see the West. This video is about how language reveals, and shapes, what we value. From “Namaste” to “As-salamu alaykum,” the everyday greetings I heard in India weren’t transactional, they were rooted in humility, respect, and peace. And that stands in sharp contrast to how we speak in the West, where worth is often tied to productivity, and introductions are more like résumés. I’m not romanticizing India. It has real, ongoing problems like any country. But it also gets some deeply important things right, especially when it comes to how people treat each other. I explore that contrast in this episode, not to idealize or condemn, but to reflect on what we’ve lost… and what we might still be able to rebuild.