How learning hides in plain sight

In 2016, I traveled to India for my stepsister's wedding.

I took only Simrun, who was eight then. The twins stayed behind — a decision shaped by a recent prior trip to Scotland, where we had lost Bella for half an hour on a crowded street. I remember the particular panic of that day, the way time stretched and thinned. I did not want to feel that way again in a country that was both mine and no longer entirely mine.

There was another purpose to the trip, quieter but persistent. We had just moved to Florida, and I was trying to understand whether it would be possible to keep buffaloes in north Florida — an idea that felt impractical to most people, but necessary to me in a way I could not yet explain. So leaving the two six-year-old twins with my husband was simply what was sane.

One afternoon, riding in the back of a taxi between Bilimora and Ahmedabad, I remember looking at Simrun.

Outside the window, Gujarat moved in its usual pattern — cars zipping through traffic like it was a video game race, roadside vendors performing their daily rituals. It was the kind of scene I had imagined she would carry forever.

But she sat beside me with headphones on, absorbed in her "American book" — Matilda. Her face was calm, distant in the way children look when they have gone somewhere inward.

I remember feeling disappointed.

I had believed she was old enough to understand the magnitude of where she was — that she would watch, listen, ask questions, gather memories the way I was trying to gather them for her.

I told her to take off her headphones. To look outside. To read the "Indian books" I had brought.

I told her, perhaps too sharply, that this was why I had brought her there.

Years passed before I understood how wrong I had been.

She had been paying attention in ways I could not see then — to language, to tone, to the choreography of family, to the way India arranges itself around you whether you look directly at it or not.

Children do not always learn where we point their faces. Sometimes they learn from the air itself.

I think about that now when I watch my children at the markets.

They have spent years beside me — early mornings, folding tables, offering samples, speaking to strangers. I have often watched them and seen what they were not yet doing:

Not smiling enough. Not selling enough. Not understanding the psychology I thought they should already grasp.

There is always, in my mind, room for improvement.

But memory interrupts me.

I see again the taxi in India. The headphones. The book.

And I recognize the familiar mistake — assuming learning must look a certain way to be real.

Some of what guides me in business today came from working with my uncle when I was young. I did not know I was being taught. He did not know he was teaching. Yet in certain moments, I find myself repeating his decisions with an instinct that feels inherited rather than learned.

Now my children run the St. Augustine market on their own. My mother stands nearby — steady, watchful — the quiet bridge between generations.

When I think about it, I feel less urgency than I once did. Less need to correct every gesture.

This is only the beginning of their story.

One day, years from now, I know I will look back on this season — the folding tables, the early mornings, the imperfect conversations — and understand how much was taking root beneath the surface.

I love what I do for a living; I have found my stride. But my current success and the growth of my children have both been indelibly marked by the support and interest of you, our customers, and also other market vendors and organizers.

Thank you for your grace. Thank you for helping them. For watching them when I cannot.

We are all still learning — only a few chapters ahead of where they are.

Warmly,
Punita