Journey through Bullock Carts to Autonomous Cars : Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

 Journey through Bullock Carts 

to Autonomous Cars

Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao (August 28, 2026)

Recently being in the USA to spend a holiday with my children and grandchildren, who settled here, I and my wife were driven in an advanced, autonomous car. My son sat in the driver’s seat, yet his hands never touched the steering wheel. The car navigated complex roads seamlessly, guided entirely by an AI-powered instruction specifying our destination point. While I understood the technological premise, witnessing this hands-free innovation firsthand brought my mind racing back to a beautiful memory from my village childhood.

Seven Decades ago, we traveled at night in wooden bullock carts to reach neighbouring villages along familiar dirt pathways. A driver sat up front, but under the gentle glow of the moonlight, the entire family would fall fast asleep. The intelligent bullocks knew the paths perfectly; they navigated the terrain safely, stopped to drink water at familiar streams, and brought us to our destination without a single disturbance. The autonomous car and the ancient bullock cart meet across time, reminding me that our search for comfort is a timeless journey.

I am now over seventy-eight years old, born and raised in that traditional village before moving to towns and universities for my higher education. This long journey has exposed me to an astonishing pace of lifestyle changes and relentless ‘future shocks’ that leave me utterly awestruck. This running-style reflection captures the astonishing evolution of our daily habits between those two transport eras, asking vital questions about where our modern society is heading, whether these changes are necessary evils, and who is ultimately to be blamed or praised?

My earliest memories begin with morning dental hygiene, which meant walking to a tree to cut a fresh neem stick. We bruised the edge into a fiber, scrubbed our teeth using ash-like charcoal powder with our bare fingers, and cleaned our tongues by splitting that very same neem stick. Over the decades, this shifted into plastic toothbrushes paired with coarse tooth powders. Eventually, we arrived at modern ergonomic brushes and infinite variants of chemical toothpastes, replacing our organic connection to nature with synthetic plastic tubes.

Similar evolution story is about commercialization of our daily coffee. Coffee preparation was an art that involved solid chicory-infused tablets and straining the brew through a delicate cloth piece. We then transitioned through traditional brass decoction filters, exploring an endless variety of brands. Today, the slow ritual has dissolved into instant coffee granules, customized sugarless black coffee, and premium Starbucks cups. We pay exorbitant prices for corporate brands, yet the rich, authentic taste of our childhood remains completely missing.

Fresh, pure milk has tragically become a relic of the past, completely vanishing from our daily lives. These days, even remote villagers rely on pasteurized milk packaged in plastic pouches processed in far-off cities, often heavily adulterated, watery, and entirely stripped of its natural, rich flavor. Consequently, boiling thick milk (full cream) and setting fresh curd with the previous day’s culture is rapidly diminishing. Processed yogurt, replaced the sacred household staple into corporate fast food.

In those pristine days, thick buttermilk was a staple beverage consumed multiple times a day right after churning vigorously the curd by hand to separate fresh, floating butter, which we then slowly boiled to create aromatic ghee. Cooking oils were crushed locally from raw groundnut pieces in village mills. Today, manual churning has vanished. Surprisingly, corporate advertisements claim traditional ghee and oils are dreadful for our health. They force us to buy packaged processed products, masking the real culprit: widespread commercial adulteration.

Our breakfast in my childhood, was the early morning meal, often previous night’s leftover rice, preserved overnight in water, known affectionately as ‘Chaddi Annam.’ Eaten with spicy mango pickles, aged tamarind chutney, and fresh curd, it was a nutritious, gut-healthy blessing. Slowly, our kitchens transitioned to hot, freshly prepared regional staples like upma, fluffy idlis, crisp dosas, and oily pooris. Those traditional breakfasts are a distant memory.

Answering nature's calls once meant long, mindful morning walks into the open fields while carrying small, traditional water vessels. Though primitive, this routine provided a form of indirect physical exercise and a quiet connection with the rising sun. Today, we have luxury attached bathrooms featuring sophisticated Western commodes. A tiny yard's walk takes us into integrated ‘restrooms’ where we answer nature's calls, bathe, and dress in one enclosed space.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor to enjoy a peaceful meal has entirely disappeared. The adoption of Western dining tables has become an absolute necessity in every contemporary home, forcing a rigid posture upon us. Even worse is the modern trend of standing buffets at social gatherings, where guests are forced to awkwardly balance heavy plates directly on their laps while attempting to eat.

The very vessels holding our food reflect this shift from the eco-friendly to the highly disposable. We once ate majestically from hand-stitched Moduga Tree Leaves or fresh banana leaves, moving later to heavy aluminium and steel plates. The wealthy dined on fine silver plates, intricately inlaid with a small golden flower in the center. Then came breakable porcelain tableware, which has now been entirely replaced by plastic-coated paper plates. Our cups and glasses have followed this cheap, ‘use and throw’- creating mountains of environmental waste.

Bathing was once a vigorous, cold-water ritual centered around drawing heavy buckets directly from the open village well. For hot water, we burned agricultural waste like dried Kandi firewood or red gram stalks beneath massive copper vessels. This evolved through sawdust stoves, smokeless rocket stoves, charcoal braziers, liquid kerosene burners, electric immersion rods etc. Soon, we transitioned to massive storage tank geysers, energy-efficient heat pumps, rooftop solar heaters, and ultra-modern dispenser taps that flash-heat boiling water instantly.

Our sleeping surfaces have similarly transitioned from natural grounding materials to artificial comfort systems. We progressed from sleeping on the flat floor mat, to hard wooden platforms, to flexible woven ‘Nulaka Rope Cots.’ This shifted to ‘Woven Tape Navaar Cots,’ single wooden frames with cotton mattresses, and double cots with steel innersprings. Today, homes feature massive queen and king-size beds layered with pressure-relieving memory foam or latex. The latest innovations feature smart adjustable bases and futuristic, climate-controlled, sensory-deprivation sleep pod systems.

The textiles that cover us have transformed from artisanal village creations into highly synthetic, mass-produced fabrics. My childhood was filled with coarse, handloom blankets woven lovingly by local village families, including the traditional, extra-long ‘Seven-Moora Dhuppati.’ When these sheets grew thin, grandmother hand-stitched them into heavy, layered patchwork quilts known as a ‘Razai.’ Then came, factory-manufactured cotton Solapur chaddars and synthetic blankets. Today, we sleep under Egyptian cotton sheets, comforters, and smart weighted blankets.

The labour-intensive task of clothes maintenance has shifted from a shared outdoor chore to fully automated, waterless technology. Village washerman used to collect our laundry, carry it to the local rivulet, beat it on river rocks, and dry it on sandbanks. This moved indoors with copper boiling pots, wooden scrubbing washboards, and laundry soap bars. Soon, semi-automatic twin-tub machines arrived, followed by fully automatic top-loaders. Today, we use front-loaders with AI fabric sensors and steam-sanitizing, waterless ultrasonic washer-dryer combos.

Our ancestral cooking process and garment care have been entirely revolutionized, changing the speed, tools, and very essence of domestic life. We began by ironing with heavy charcoal iron boxes packed with live wood embers, which transitioned over decades into basic electric units and automated smart steam closets.

Similarly, cooking evolved from slow-burning coal stoves and rustic earthenware to portable LPG cylinders and piped gas lines. Today, traditional stovetop pressure cookers have been largely pushed aside for clean induction cooktops, rapid air fryers, and AI-guided countertop multi-cookers. These modern appliances have undoubtedly brought unprecedented speed to our kitchens, yet they have simultaneously stripped away the slow, soulful essence of traditional home-cooked nourishment.