[... Till Now]
10th March, 9.00 AM,
Richmond
The guy in
that store was from sub continent. I asked for mobile recharge, he waited for
another customer to left and then told me in Hindi, “Hna, aab batao kya karna
hain?”
There was confusion
about the recharge which I explained. He was not very sure, then he called
someone named Jitubhai and said, “Inha ek Bhai aya hain…” and explained the issue. Finally he
could not help and ask me to be sure before recharging as even if the recharge
does not happen $70 will be anyway deducted and could not be refunded.
His accent
was Gujrati but he later told me that his name was Aziz, and he is a Pakistani
and his parents were Indian! He was surprised to know that I am a Bengali
because apparently my Hindi/Urdu was very good and also said “Abar dekha hobe”
when I was leaving.
 |
| [The evening skyline] |
It felt
wonderful. I may be wrong but even I had experienced this same thing in Sydney
too. Outside India/Pakistan, generally Indians and Pakistanis just behave like
they are from the same country! I absolutely loved that.
Just roam
around a bit, watched the evening to grow in Innsbrooke and had dinner in this
Thai Restaurant with chicken and shrimp. The evening was chilly so went inside
pretty soon. Sekar called and talked to him for some time and then researched a
lot for possible travel plan on Sunday.
Unfortunately,
I can’t go to Washington DC now, as all suitable trains were full; I was too
late to book the tickets. So alternatively I decided to roam around Richmond,
go to Downtown and Belle Isle.
It was a
cold night and even in the morning the temperature is pretty low. It’s around 2
degree now and expected to be around 14 post noon. This is the story till now;
I hope to write another portion tonight before my office starts tomorrow.
From
tomorrow the plan is to wake up around 6 and finish breakfast around 7 to reach
the office by 7.30. Let see how it goes.
Cheers!!
actually when I landed at jfk last to last week, I took a cab to manhattan. Cab driver seemed likely to be from sub continent. I asked him whether he is originally from India. He said, "No, Pakistan. But it's the same country, right?"
ReplyDeleteI agreed with him profusely.
heartwarming - this is the way it should be!
ReplyDeleteAnywhere you go it's the same. Everyone treats India-Pakistan as same country... and they are always very helpful.
ReplyDelete