Mumbai -> Zürich -> San Francisco

The last train I took in India was the Vihar fast train.  Both Natasha and Shivani had warned me against doing so, but I didn’t understand why… until I was so squished that I could barely breathe.  I was mildly amused when I saw the women pushing each other violently to board the train, but the half-an-hour on the train made me slightly less jovial.

While standing there squished I struck up a conversation with this nice looking woman whose son was being all but suffocated. Initially we joked about the train but somehow ended up on the serious topic of how ridiculous it is that people in both of our cultures (“East” and “West”) want to have the skin color of the other. In the US and Brazil we want tans, in India they want to be “Fair and Lovely”.   “We are all supposed to be the way that God made us” she said, and went on to tell me that the first people of the world were dark. Jesus was dark she said and Adam means “Dark Earth”.  When I was thinking that I first people were dark I was thinking of Lucy, but her comment opened up the topic of her devout Roman Catholicism. She’s converted because she’d “had an encounter with Jesus”.  I don’t put this in quotes to belittle her belief, but she actually said that and it encapsulated her devotion. I guess she assumed I was Christian and when I said I wasn’t she talked about how Christianity really was the best way of living.

I never know what to do in those kinds of situations. I’d been watching a documentary on gay rights in Italy (In India? Yep, it was part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival) and there was one instance where the protagonist was interviewing a bigot who was saying that taking children away from two lesbian mothers was the same thing as rescuing children from pedophiles. It made me angry to hear such ignorance and bigotry and the protagonists partner (who was the camera man) got angry with him afterward for standing there smiling and nodding as the bigot preached his doctrine.  What are you supposed to do in that kind of situation? As a documentarian I suppose you are trying to get people to express their views, but as a passenger on a train, as a person with friends who are otherwise religious, I felt it was important to express the view that Christianity wasn’t the only way. My objection was very vague and poorly articulated. It basically said something like “Well, yeah, that’s what all religions seem to be in essence, love yourself and love others as they are”. If your reject the notion of religion entirely I suppose the suggestion that all major religions seem to have this principle is uninteresting. But even though I’m not a very religious person I think the idea of loving yourself and others is very important. Love and acceptance make relationships possible, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t trying to shoot my conversation partner down.

When it was my turn to get off I worried I would have to employ the same violent methods.  As the train pulled into the station I had a moment of mild inspiration and I jumped off the train before it came to a full stop.  Thereby avoiding the onslaught of pushy women.

In the last couple of days I’ve realized how important I think relationships are. My last hours in Bombay with Natasha and Vahishta were great. It’s really nice to feel that I have people to visit who are more than just “people I know”.  I met them through Couchsurfing, but by the end of my time in Bombay I felt I’d gained two new friends.  India is a country that is all about relationship, there is a special name for your mother’s sister or father’s brother and you can get almost anything done if you know the right people.  Throughout my trip, this fact about the country has resonated through my life.  For me, this whole trip was made possible because of my friends.  Dia, Tarush and Gobind really got it off the ground, Stubbs made me realize I would regret it forever if I didn’t go, Ben was my travel buddy who endured the 20 or so hour flight with me, Ted who endured food poisoning with me, Meghaa, Shroff, Aishwarya, Shivani… the list goes on.  It’s because of these relationships that my trip and my life is as rich as it feels.

On my flight back I had the good fortune of visiting the polar opposite of India because of another dear friendship.  My friend good Rafa lives in Zürich and my stop over was about seven hours long so I popped into town to spend the morning with him.  The first train I took in Zürich left me in a state of serious culture shock. Everything was clean, calm and incredibly spacious. The café au laits and croissants that we had were surreal. But mostly it was wonderful to visit my friend. We hadn’t seen each other since our French course last summer in Toulouse so it was really cool that we were able to meet up briefly.  We felt so cool that we’d pulled off our jet-setting reunion. I thought of a high school teacher of mine describing fabulously rich guy hopping over to Scotland from New York because he wanted to play a superb round of golf.  I wasn’t exactly hopping over to Switzerland just to have coffee with Rafa, but it certainly felt like it.

We spent the morning walking around and catching up and enjoying the comic cadences of the French language.  The streets of Zürich transported me to a gingerbread world and because I was speaking a language I hadn’t thought in for ages, I felt as if I was in a dream.  Everything was delightful. Especially discovering that every fountain in Zürich has potable water.  They even have a portion that is low to the ground so the dogs can hydrated them selves. Perhaps the best part of the morning was wandering into a pâtisserie and finding my most favorite confection in the whole world: Macarons!!! They seem to be called Luxemburgerli in Swiss-German, but to me they will always be Macarons. We got pistachio, raspberry, and champagne with chocolate butter cream.  We installed ourselves in a part overlooking the river to enjoy them.  We wandered around a bit more and then I headed back to the airport.  It definitely wasn’t enough time in such a lovely city as Zürich and it certainly wasn’t enough time to visit with my friend.  But, I’ll be back there again.

On the plane from Zürich to San Francisco I watched about four movies. One of them was The Social Network.  It was a pretty well done film but left me feeling disturbed. This may spoil the film, but I think everyone knows the basic story anyways.  The guy ends up fabulously successful but with no friends.  The film presents a vision of American life where what it takes to be economically successful is a ruthless entrepreneurial spirit. On the one hand, I think that kind of initiative is impressive.  But it is impressive in a disturbing way. It is a spirit that prizes profit over relationships.  After doing a bit of research it seems the snide, cold version of Mark Zuckerburg the film presents is not at all what he’s really like.  My friend who’s met Zuckerburg confirmed this. It could of course be the result of really good PR, or the result of a lesson learned, but I think he actually probably is a nice guy. The film presents a world where success comes at the price of sacrificing relationships.

On this trip, because of crowded trains, the kindness of my friends and the joy of being with them, I’ve realized that relationships are definitely more important to me.