It is so heartening to learn that there are still people around to whom friendship and friends are retained beyond that point, where friends are not required anymore and the relationship has outgrown its 'usability'.
I suddenly bumped into a friend at Houston Durga Bari. He seemed to be as much "at home" having 'khichuri' in the food tent on Oshtomi morning as he was in "Borjora'. I had not been in touch with him for many years and expected only exchanges of friendly 'hellos & hi 's'.
Initially I thought of it as his perfunctory courtesy when he invited me to his place at Westheimer Avenue in Downtown Houston. But the warmth, cordiality and hospitality shown by him, in a foreign land, where he had relocated to, in his late 40's from a suburb of Durgapur in India and was still struggling to get a foothold in his adopted land of 4 years, brought tears to the eyes of a person who was slowly getting to believe that relationships depend only on the usability of the partner concerned.
He drove about 20 miles from his office to pick us up and took us to his apartment. He did not make a show off of his success and he came across as the same simple soul with no pretensions. People had written him off here, back home as a failure, and I assumed that it was a story of tenacity and hard struggle for him to have reached where he was at the moment. He did no exhibit his acquired possessions in the US, which I have noticed was the norm with many expats there. In fact, the amount of effort he took so that I could visit his tiny apartment, the extreme happiness on his face when I went there, his constant gestures that showed that he would be elated, if we tasted whatever food he had prepared for us, out of whatever little he had, or his flaunting of our friendship to all, who knew him there in Houston, his opening his Skype on his laptop, to show me off to his parents and family back in India...made me feel so acknowledged, wanted and cherished.
Initially I thought of it as his perfunctory courtesy when he invited me to his place at Westheimer Avenue in Downtown Houston. But the warmth, cordiality and hospitality shown by him, in a foreign land, where he had relocated to, in his late 40's from a suburb of Durgapur in India and was still struggling to get a foothold in his adopted land of 4 years, brought tears to the eyes of a person who was slowly getting to believe that relationships depend only on the usability of the partner concerned.
He drove about 20 miles from his office to pick us up and took us to his apartment. He did not make a show off of his success and he came across as the same simple soul with no pretensions. People had written him off here, back home as a failure, and I assumed that it was a story of tenacity and hard struggle for him to have reached where he was at the moment. He did no exhibit his acquired possessions in the US, which I have noticed was the norm with many expats there. In fact, the amount of effort he took so that I could visit his tiny apartment, the extreme happiness on his face when I went there, his constant gestures that showed that he would be elated, if we tasted whatever food he had prepared for us, out of whatever little he had, or his flaunting of our friendship to all, who knew him there in Houston, his opening his Skype on his laptop, to show me off to his parents and family back in India...made me feel so acknowledged, wanted and cherished.
It was a diametrically opposite experience from others which had shaped my belief about relationships and friendship overall. I shall retain the flavours of the spiced Mexican dried mango from 'Sprouts' in my senses for years to come along with the flavour of rekindled friendship.
This just goes on to prove that in order to learn, one needs to travel.
