Two short interactions brought a smile to my face today...& made me think...
There is a small store just one house down from me - many people in my neighborhood have a small space below their flat/house for retail. I was heading out to Spencers for groceries moments after the shop had been opened. The proprietor doesn't speak much English...yet he called out to me in Bengali some version of wait, wait. He pantomimed rain would be coming & I should go back & get an umbrella! I ended up making it to Spencers before the shower arrived; he grinned a wide smile when I came home, dry, thanks to his words of advice.
I also needed to head to the larger mall to recharge my mobile phone, hopping onto an auto rickshaw. The driver remembered me! He said, in broken English, yes, he remembered I would be getting off @ the Jadavpur Police Station stop & that I was a kind woman who recognized both wallah & manager of Spencers in the same way. Not sure if this reputation ingratiates me with the grocery management staff...very pleased to have the other employees feel like I'm showing them respect, though.
Both encounters made me realize how few times I "reach into" the lives of strangers in my neighborhood. Does the family across the street from me speak English? Are they feeling as disconnected to their true homes as I do sometimes? When did the shift to a garage society, pulling into our garages & shutting out the events swirling through our street, occur in the US? Distance provides challenges, I realize, in a city more spread out like Minneapolis...do similar vignettes occur in higher density cities likeChicago or New York City when obvious newcomers arrive? Or is it even hard to recognize newcomers because of our wide range of diversity?
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