Welcome to 's World

Friendly Strangers & Strangerly Friends.

How often do you get to interact with perfect strangers? Am I asking you people that question? I guess you would say “Every day!” Let me rephrase again! “How often do you get to interact with perfect strangers and make friends with one who will be your friend for your entire lifetime?” Now I got the gray cells in your brain working! Haven’t I? Let me recount an incident from my life.

It was a hot summer afternoon in 2001. It was half an hour before I had to catch the train to go to Pondicherry. This would be my final trip there before I left to the US. It was total chaos at home. I was busy packing my stuff. “Did you take your toothbrush?” asked mom. “Anna, here is your Dinner!” sis said handing over a bag of rotis rolled in aluminum foil with some tasty sabji. “Just twenty minutes left!” called out dad. It is an interesting phenomenon! When we have to meet a deadline, we all work together to reach it. I have observed it every time I left home.

Twenty Five days before I was to leave to the US, I was about to get onto a train to Pondicherry. “I don’t understand why you have to go to Pondicherry!” Mom said, bringing up the topic of discussion that was being argued out for the last three days. “Mom, I got to get the reco letters” I said. Dad put his foot down and that was the end of the argument. Sis offered to drop me to the railway station in the car, but we decided on the Kinetic Honda, it was more maneuverable. We managed to reach the railway station seven minutes before the train was to leave. I wonder if there is the concept of “speeding ticket” in India, all it mattered was that I had to get onto that train.

There were three others in the cabin of the second class compartment and it seems I was not the last person to board the train. An elderly gentleman in his mid-fifties and his wife came in and settled down. Being the chivalrous person I am, I helped them tuck their luggage under the seat.

The train started moving and I settled down with Richard Bach’s “One”. Wonder how many times I have read that book. The story of parallel dimensions and Leslie & Richard meeting Leslie & Richard from their past, future and alternate selves. The time when they first met in an elevator many years ago, not gathering up enough courage to talk to each other only to discover almost a decade and two marriages later to discover that they were soul mates. The story of Attila-the-Hun, the divine light, the bot that was created to care of the animals after humans destroyed the earth and the story of Tink. Tink! Yeah, Tink!

Leslie & Richard on their journey though the Mobius strip of time-space continuum go the factory where ideas are manufactured. They meet Tink the thought fairy who went by multiple names like the sleeping fairy, the shower fairy, the walk fairy, the yahoo-chat fairy etc. Whenever Tink would give Leslie & Richard and idea, she would be called that fairy. Little did they know that they would walk through that gap in the time fabric and one day look at the crystal with those color coded ideas.

While I was wondering what my train-fairy had in store for me, I was brought out of reverie by a voice! “Excuse me! Could you help me with my bag please?” The voice was that of a beautiful girl’s who was in the seat beside mine. Hmm, wonder how I never noticed her before. I helped her get her bag down and she fished out a John Grisham novel, The Rainmaker.

“So what do you do, other than helping damsels in distress?” she asked. I told her that I was going to Pondicherry to visit my friends there and that I studied there in the med-school. “Pondicherry!!!!!! isn’t it supposed to be the best medical school in India? And isn’t that you should get in the top 14 ranks in country to get in? You must be a genius!!”

After convincing her that it was otherwise and that I got into that med-school by a stroke of luck (modesty is my middle name) I asked her what she was up to? She told me that she was going to start law school in the US next semester and that she was going home after meeting her friends in Hyderabad.

“Wow! That’s great! I will be leaving to the US too in a month’s time too.” I told her. “Oreally,” interjected the middle aged gentleman, “My son is in the US too. Congratulations to you both on getting the visa. Why don’t you have some idlis for dinner?” I got out my rotis and we all had a community dinner.

“So you must be having a very exciting life huh?” she asked. I told her about life of doctors, a typical day in the emergency room, my experiences in the cardio-thoracic ward and about my first heart operation.

“I had a hole in my heart too when I was a kid! They had to operate on me when I was four. I still have this huge scar on my chest.” We talked about her operation for sometime and then our topic of discussion went from type of music we listened to, the book we read, the movies we see, favorite constellations in the sky, hobbies, favorite hang out places etc. There was electricity in the air and I told her the concept of Tink, the train fairy.

It is very rare that you get to meet a perfect stranger and you realize that you are at the same wavelength. I told her about my ‘inspiration’ to join the medical world and about various schools I had to attend because my dad was in a transferable job.

She told me that she was born in Canada and that she too had to shift many schools as her case was the same as mine. She said that she always wanted to become a doctor, but she was very scared of blood. She said she almost fainted at the sight of blood once. We kept talking and we never realized that we had spent the whole night chatting away. We had reached Madras and the sun was just rising.

We scribbled our email addresses on small pieces of paper and exchanged it (This has started to sound a lot like the movie Serendipity!). I went to Pondicherry and she went home.

A month later, I sent her and email and was overwhelmed to receive a reply within a minute. She had misplaced my email address and so she couldn’t send me an email. She was glad that I had sent her an email.

Months later, we were still buddies and we still chat with each other. One April morning, she caught me online and she said, “Guess what? I am getting married!!!” I was very happy for her and wished her all the best in married life. I had found a new reason to pull her leg and I did my part with perfection. Her fiancée invited me over to California so that he could get to meet this mysterious train-friend. I am very happy for that perfect stranger who became my friend.

That Afternoon after the train journey, I reached Pondicherry and I called my girlfriend of six years who told me that she had no time to meet me! A friend had become a stranger in a moment.