Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Bhai and The Thai


[... 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!!

3 comments:

  1. 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?"

    I agreed with him profusely.

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  2. heartwarming - this is the way it should be!

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  3. Anywhere you go it's the same. Everyone treats India-Pakistan as same country... and they are always very helpful.

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"It’s always very easy to give up. All you have to say is ‘I quit’ and that’s all there is to it. The hard part is to carry on”