The Kindness of Strangers
One day every week, I attend a class to learn violin, about 4 bus-stops away from home, in a slightly dingy area. These days, with the Bangalorean winter setting in, it starts getting dark by 6 o clock and by the time I finish class at 7, everything looks dull and gloomy. So, I was thankful when I got to the stop and almost immediately, my bus came up. I struggled up the stairs - umbrella tucked under one arm, holding my music notes in one hand, clutching the violin with another and trying hard to keep my fashionable-but-impractical handbag from falling off my shoulder. The driver took one look at me and immediately asked me to give him the violin, so that he could place it next to his seat.
A very small and instinctive act that set me thinking about the kindness of strangers.
Last year, my husband and I saved up to go to Europe during the summer. I looked forward to it for months, but I was also somewhat apprehensive - would we be treated well? Since we were going to some smaller, rural areas as well, would we face any trouble? As it happened, we needn’t have worried. For the most part, we met with such friendliness and help from all the people we met.
Asking for directions in the compact and beautiful French town of Colmar, we were startled when two 70-year old ladies started walking us in the right direction. We thought they were going the same way; they weren’t - they just wanted to be sure that we got to the right bus-stop. `At the tiny village of Hunawihr, walking on the routes des vins, for some ten minutes, I stopped enjoying the country-side around me while my mind was focused on only 1 thing - how to find a toilet, and find one quick! The village had practically shut down for the day and the one public toilet (outside a church) was closed. In desperation, I asked a woman emerging from a school, if she could help. It turned out that she was the gym mistress, and very graciously, she unlocked the school and gym that she had just closed, and waited while I used the loo.
In Paris, at the interminable queue outside the Palace of Versailles, an Italian lady extended her umbrella over our heads as it started raining. The umbrella wasn’t quite enough for 3 people, but it didn’t matter. In Amsterdam, lost in the circuitous streets, a young man who saw us poring over a map, volunteered to our rescue.
Closer home, when we visited the Andaman islands this year, we were captivated by a plant with lovely pink flowers, at one of the homes. Hesitantly, we enquired of the owner whether we might have a sapling to take back for our garden. A young girl, who informed us that it was the ‘madhavi-lata’, enthusiastically dug up one for us, though it took her some time and effort.
While we enjoy the places that we visit - the chance to see the well-known monuments and natural beauty of the world and explore unusual cuisine and activities, is it not the kindness of strangers that makes travel so much more enriching? And not just travel, but in the midst of so much gloom and pessimism, it makes life itself so much sweeter.
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I so agree with what you say.
I am going to Goa for Christmas, and I also hope to capture some part of their culture to get back. I am planning to stay at a home stay for this precise reason.
Aathira, I am hesitant about capturing culture
My own view is that one will always be an outsider, which is why I refuse to get into the tourist versus traveller debate; but yes, home stays (the genuine ones, not the resorts masquerading as home stays) are usually much warmer…
I’ve met with kindness from unexpected quarters like once i was short of money at the Rly.ticket counter and before the counter clerk started bawling at me for booking tickets without sufficient money,the man behind me offered me a 100 rupee note and i took it without even seeing who he was.When I later asked him for his address he said that he knew that I was -a teacherji living in kadma - and i could give the money to his cousin who ran a shop in the main road of my area.A stranger pitching in for help!Another time I searched for the purse in which I keep my money just before boarding a bus and realized that I had left it in my drawer at my college and had only carried my books back.I tried to get off the bus when the conductor said ‘no need to go back,you can pay tomorrow’!
oh yes, I remember such an incident too, when my mother was stranded at a bus-stop, with us kids, and her purse lost. A kind soul offered us money for the bus, giving us his address… confident that we would pay it back.