Lucky T

The book Lucky T takes us on a journey through India in the eyes of a young teenage girl. The book explores a whole new culture, different clothes, different religions, and a different environment in general. Some of the very first things she notices when getting off the plane in Calcutta India is the men at the airport with machine guns, and how everyone seemed to be speaking a language she could not understand. Driving through the city she notes that “there were literally thousands of people. Pedestrians walked around in droves… shouting to one another across the street.” She was overwhelmed by how many people were in India, and also by how diverse they were. The people wore anything from suits, to polo’s and saris to jeans. This book paints a picture in your head around every corner, depicting the journey being laid out in front of the protagonist. It is the internal journey however, that is the important part.

Before Carrie sets off on her adventure to India she is extremely superstitious and self-centered. The whole reason she went in the first place was not to join the Help India program to make a positive difference in the world, but to get back her lucky T. Instead of letting go of the T-shirt she convinces her mother to let her go half way around the world to find it, by convincing her that she really wants to help in the Help India movement. Later on in the book, however, she discovers that bad luck might not have been the worst thing in the world, because it leads her to India where she finds love, and a passion for helping others. While it may be easiest to live your life with the comfort of good luck, it might not always mean you will have the most fulfilling life. Her views at the end of the book are so much different about her lucky T, that when she finally finds it she doesn’t take it back. When she finds her shirt, it is on a poor little girl living in a shelter. She is bruised from being beaten by her uncle. It is then that Carrie realizes that even if the T-shirt is good luck, that this little girl needs it more than she does. It took her traveling halfway around the world to realize that she was lucky all along, and that someone needed that hope more than she did. At the end of her journey she is no longer superstitious and selfless, completing a complete transformation.