So I am writing a post after a year.. Not that I forgot about my blog but somehow or the other it kept getting postponed and before I knew it so many months have gone by. Anyway, I recently had an experience and I decided to finally write about it.
I met a lady. I had gone to Mumbai and was putting up at a guest house on sharing basis. On my first night there I was sharing the room with an oldish lady. She said she was Gujarati but she lived in Kenya. You must be thinking why I suddenly decided to write about her. Well, to be honest, I was sitting uselessly during internship one day and I suddenly remembered about the blog and was determined to write a post. So I tried to think about something I could write on and this lady popped into my head and it made sense to me.
So this lady, (either she did not tell me her name or I cant seem to remember it for some reason), asks questions. From the time I entered the room she kept asking me a million questions about my life, my work, my family, my affairs and every other possible aspect of my life. Now that might sound harmless to you but in my defense, that was the first time that I had been alone in an unknown city all by myself. The point being I was quite taken aback by the degree of inquisitiveness and was a little scared to be honest. I did not know where she actually came from, what she was doing there and why she wanted to know so much about me.
Since childhood we are taught not to talk to strangers or take sweets from them. And there I was in an unknown city in a room with a stranger who would not stop asking me everything about myself. So my first impression of her was that of pure suspicion and dislike.
Later, the next day she came to me in the morning and asked me, "are you unhappy that I moved into the room?" I was not prepared for a question like that and as much as I would have liked to say, "yes very much so", something inside me slightly softened for her. That night she asked me when I leave for office in the morning and the next morning I was really surprised when I overslept a little bit and she tried to wake me up so that I don't get late. This was just one of the many things she did during her 3 day visit which completely changed the way I felt about her. She was concerned when I kept sneezing and offered me fruits when I did not have anything to have for breakfast. She offered to make my bed when I was getting late and she took care of me like she has known me since childhood. She left three days later and told me before leaving, "Hey, I am leaving today. Won't be bothering you anymore." She left that night and believe it or not I actually missed her when she was gone. She taught me how wrong it is to always assume the worst about people, something we probably do quite often in our lives.
