A Conversation I Carried Home

This is Raghu, a goat herder from a village in Bhondsi, Haryana. I met him while I was taking photos in a nature park. He noticed me and offered to help identify some birds. I didn’t ask, but he observed, then stepped up to help.

We talked for a bit, and that short conversation opened up a lot for me.

Raghu owns 16 goats (and each has a name!). His daily routine starts at 5 am, when he delivers goat milk to nearby areas. By 9 am, he’s in the forest with his goats. Two meals a day – once before heading out and again in the evening when he returns.

Five years ago, he lost one eye after a thorny branch injured him. But he has no regrets. “Saab, bhagwan ne jo diya hain, woh bahut hain. Ek aankh hi toh chale gaye hain naa, dusra toh hain na? Main toh hamesha unse shukarguzar hoon…bahut kuch diya hain bhagwan ne. Bahut khush hoon mein”. (“Sir, God has given me so much. So what if I have lost one eye? I still have the other, don’t I? I am always grateful to Him. God has blessed me with so much. I am very happy with my life.”)

Raghu doesn’t own a phone. “Kya zaroorat hai, saab, abhi tak toh zaroorat nahi pada, aur naa hi padega. Unpad hoon, yeh saab mereko nahi aata hai.” (“What do I need it for, sir? I’ve never needed one so far, and I don’t think I ever will. I’m not educated, and I don’t know how to use these things.”)

Simple conversations like this can make you think. Raghu may not have had formal education, but he understands life and happiness deeply. That evening, as I thought about meeting him, two things stayed with me: gratitude and simplicity.

Gratitude isn’t always about how much we have, but about how we see what we do have. Raghu lost an eye, but he wasn’t bitter or feeling deprived. He simply appreciated what he still had.

To many of us, Raghu’s life might seem ordinary or even hard. But he helped me realize something we often talk about: happiness can come from being content with what we have, instead of always wanting more.

I went to the forest hoping to photograph birds, but I returned with something much more meaningful.