I’m fairly certain that I am bad at making friends on my own. That isn’t to say I don’t have friends. I just have never gone out with the purpose of making friends. There was no need before.
Think about it.
As a kid growing up in our small hometown, our parents had already been friends. Some of them had even gone to school together. So we just continue that legacy. We were friends before kindergarten had even started (or in my case, young fives). In college, my best friends were the people in the same residence hallway as myself. It was hot outside and one guy had by far the best fan. Seriously, that fan was amazingly. It was the only room in the hallway that wasn’t 90 degrees. Instant friendship between a hallway that lasted for all four years. In graduate school, your friends are the other students. You have to be friends with your softball team and officemates, right? So truly, it wasn’t until I moved to India that I had to learn how to make friends from scratch. I’m terrible at it.
My first friend (Friend E) that I made was actually arranged by our parents, back in Michigan. So again, not my work at all. My second friend, Friend N, began our friendship via an e-mail inquiring in to the history of my last name. So I’m still a big fat zero on making friends by my own initiative. I have friends; I just didn’t make them on my own. I tried, a bit. I invited a teacher friend to dinner; she refused. I joined an expat group; I didn’t find anything in common. I tried to do coffee with a girl a couple of times, it never happened. Am I just bad at making friends?
My first friend has since moved; I mentioned her in a few blogs: Coincidences, The Hamburger Hangover, and briefly in Back in Delhi. She, her husband, and her housemates were a lot of fun but are now back in the good old US of A.
Our very last adventure together was great. She finally got me on a train. I cheated a bit, and had my driver drop us off at the train station. It was a Friday and so we had to dodged our way around praying Muslims (Friday is their holy day) and pushed ourselves to the ticket line. I asked if we were riding 1st class; it was only a dollar or so. She scoffed and told me I could handle the 5 rupee 2nd class train car.
Now, I’ve been on plenty of trains before; I commuted to school on the Metra Electric line for many years, and always take Amtrak or NICTD home to Michigan. Of course, when visiting friends in Chicago I’d use all aspects of the CTA, including the L lines. So I figured I could handle this train. But what I didn’t expect was how nice it was!
Now, Friend E picked a good, mid-day, no rush hour time to ride the train. In India, there are also female only cars, so we didn’t have to interact with the creepy eyes of the male portion of the population. We climbed aboard our car. It wasn’t too full. Maybe there wasn’t a seat available, but there was still (in Indian terms) plenty of space.
The car had open windows that generated a great breeze while the train moved. The blue seats were bench style and occupied by women clad in saris and salwar kameezes. The women in jeans were standing. Just like riding the Red Line at night in Chicago, vendors walk through the train selling items such has barrettes. One woman had a basket of rags/scarves plopped on the floor to buy.
I didn’t see any trash, which was shocking given that trash is everywhere in India, but even more shocking was the lack of smell. I’ve been on an awful lot of trains and I’d say the usual odor of a full train is a nice mixture of urine and body odor. But neither was present, so we just leaned back, made fish faces at a cute little kid, and enjoyed the breeze.
We got off a half hour or less later. We wandered around downtown, window-shopping our way to the Colaba Causeway. We were shopping for gifts for Friend E to take home. We looked at beautiful old signs and photos of Mumbai back when it was Bombay and before the invention of such newfangled things as cars. Eventually we reached the crowded Causeway and began bargaining for deals. She is much, much better at it than me.
In the end, I got a beautiful multi-colored scarf, which began unraveling immediately upon wearing; a wrap skirt decorated with rhinos and elephants that had ties that were too small to wear it properly; and a long dress/shirt that bled upon hand-washing for the first time. I think I’m going to stick to clothing items that cost more than $2 next time I go shopping… Despite the later troubles with my items (no word on whether her gifts were appreciated) we had a great time and eventually stopped at McDonald’s for a snack.
It was my first time in McDonald’s India, so I was eager to try it out. We walked up to the restaurant, which was on the second floor of a building, found ourselves some paper crowns, and ordered from employees clad in McDonald’s backpacks. We ordered the potato wedges; her because she liked them and me because I’d never had potato wedges from McDonald’s before. They were pretty good.
I, of course, am constantly desirous of ice cream and chocolately things, so we went back down the stairs to the ground level to order ice cream. I got a sundae with brownie and chocolate sauce. Yum! Friend E is only the second person in the history of human beings to not like chocolate, the first person being, oddly enough, the guy with the amazing fan from the second paragraph above. She went to the same college, lived in the same dorm, and also liked the chicken broccoli bake in the cafeteria…. coincidence? Needless to say, she didn’t get a sundae.
We continued on our merry way; my driver came down to pick us up and take us to each adventure; we went to exchange some of her books and exchange a baby shower gift our friend K had been given. We were stuck squarely in rush hour traffic on the return ride home (I guess we should have taken the train both ways, but it was monsoon season so it seems like a good idea to have a car) but chatted happily until we reached Bandra.
That weekend we did one more couple’s dinner, complete with homemade chapatti making, before they left. But not before Friend J, Friend E’s husband, showed me how to remove the fuel from the awesome gun lighter I had bought my dad as a father’s day gift. Thanks, Friend J! Now I can finally get those home safely.
Friend E and I had only met in March or so and she was gone in a couple of months. But a month or so before she left I had made my second friend, Friend N. Friend N is fascinating. Originally born in Iran she is now an American citizen who met her Indian-soon-to-be husband in the US. The first time we went out we met for coffee. We both ordered desserts instead of coffee. Match made in heaven. We ended up talking for hours and even have matching cell phones (somehow that seems important).
Friend N and I next had a massage date. We went to Aroma Thai, which gives the most amazing massages. It focuses on your feet, but our 90 minutes massage was from head-to-toe and definitely included the best back massage I have had since arriving in India.
Friend N and I kept up a constant stream of chatter throughout the 90 minutes. We are both good talkers and it was great to just chat about life with her. She is going through the process of marrying an India, much like I went through the process of marrying an American with Indian-born parents, so we can really relate, although it was much, much easier for me. I just had to deal with relatives in two countries (USA & India) and she has family around the globe.
After our massages we went for the longest lunch break in the history of my life, chatting for hours over mango salads and dim sum. For how long did we enjoy ourselves? I drank two liters of water during that lunch. Eventually we realized we had to go, but our next lunch date is tomorrow.
Maybe I haven’t done a good job of making friends, as my mom started friendship one and Friend N completely initiated friendship two, but I really have enjoyed both friendships and I hope that I am better at keeping friends than making them!
No comments:
Post a Comment