When you ask Devendra Asher about family, he lights up and sits up. His smile, usually reticent and unassuming, will stretch across his face, pulling it to the edges. Why is family so important to him? “Because what’s it for?” he asks. “If not for family.”
It’s the most basic tenet of life. Society is just different families. A country is just many societies—many families. And the world can be unforgiving, a callous master that would destroy its vulnerable without any tinge of guilt. Mr Asher knows a little about the world too. He has been all over it, leaving home at the age of 24, forever a student of life, trying to figure out his journey. He speaks about it a lot—not leaving home, the journey. It’s how he found himself in Kenya, managing the Panari Group. Enjoy the journey, he says. Don’t focus on the destination, he adds. It’s fridge magnet wisdom, but it is wisdom.
