Arrival in Calcutta. There’s a balcony with a view of the street. This is where I have been doing all of my nervous chain-smoking since I got here. I practically have this sight burned into the back of my retinas by now.

I’m here volunteering on a three-month placement for the Hope Foundation, an Irish NGO dedicated to the protection of children from the streets or the city’s many slum communities. 

So this is my quarter-life crisis: I packed in my perfectly great job, said goodbye to my home, family and friends in the UK and moved halfway across the world. The motivation was threefold: First, I love India, and I’m fed up with being just a tourist here. I want to spend time in the country and experience life beyond the backpacker circuit and temple trail. Second, I work in social design in the UK, and for a long time I’ve wanted to see if the service design methods I’ve been using in the public service sector could be applied in an NGO setting. Third: In London, I could see exactly how the next decade of my life would go. And sorry, but fuck that.

So here I am. No idea what the hell I’m doing; a beacon of blonde conspicuity. I’m terrified but never happier.