There is a town in Alaska where everyone lives in one big building. We went there a year ago. You drive through the mountains, rivers, melting glaciers, and then a tunnel that was built for a rail to carry gold from the inner parts of Alaska to the town. It's on the sea and has been used as a port since the gold rush.

We went there one rainy evening. It's a beautiful place, on the foothills of a large mountain that shadows over most of the town. "Beautiful" is a pointless adjective to use for most of the Alaskan landscape. It's just something else. It overwhelms your eyes. After a point, you stop taking photos because every place is as ornate as the other. You can't capture it on a camera.

We are destroying some of it. The glaciers are shrinking and the land is getting hotter. There are signs of where the glacier stood barely 50 years ago and how far back it has moved now. There are plaques explaining how the bears roam the low-lying areas because the land is hotter and they get more animals to hunt. It's a clear signal of things changing rapidly. A sobering reminder of the impact of human arrogance.

That evening, we found the only restaurant in the town. A quintessential American diner. A few people were drunk on the bar talking with the bartenders. Everyone must know each other there. We were the odd ones out, three Indian guys speaking with an accent. I was cold so I asked if they had any hot beverages, the waitress said she could make me some coffee. When I got to the counter to pay for the food, she asked if the coffee made me feel warm, I smiled and nodded. She didn't charge me for the coffee.

The thing is, we all carry different worlds inside of us. That lady in the diner may never know where I come from. We perhaps share nothing in common, except that warm coffee. I will never understand how life in that town is, disconnected from most of the world. But I will remember her. And her caring smile.

I think at some point, we will start to repair the damage we have done to the world, to this landscape, because no matter if you were raised in a coal township in India or a secluded town in Alaska, if you really think about it, we all kinda live in one big house.