Back in Circuit

It’s been a long time since I travelled internationally… 18 months to be exact. A lot’s transpired in life since the last time I set foot back in India from Erie, which had become almost a second home, thanks to me spending 3 months in the sleepy town and actually loving most of my stay there.

So when I decided to go back to Erie for a couple of days with a trip to Boston thrown in, I expected it to be tiring – whatever else it may turn out to be – tiring was one thing it surely would be.. 3 days spent in flights and airports for meetings which were cumulatively around 3-4 hours at the max. But then that was the nature of the job and it had to be done. So, no regrets.

I went to office the first day and met an old acquaintance who got up from his seat, came ahead and gathered me in a bear hug – my heart warmed. We asked about each others’ families, kids – we knew that business had to be discussed and dealt with – but that could wait. In today’s day and age where everything is to the point – even conversations with your spouse are limited to stuff that need to get done.. in such a world, the fact that a guy that I was meeting after a year and a half of which almost a year had gone by without much communication, was genuinely happy to see me was evidence enough to attest that human touch was still alive and throbbing….

After a couple of days in Erie, I moved onto Boston where I had to meet another acquaintance, who again was out of sight and out of mind for a long time…. He greeted me with and of course – a hug it was. Over a “business lunch” where more lunch was had and more Boston was discussed than business, we spoke as old friends would, bantering and bickering, laughing and joking and the jet lag, the fact that I was struck in the middle of nowhere and completely snowed in…. all that was suddenly forgotten and the trip was worth it… even if I didn’t get him to sign a dotted line and give me business – it was worth it. When I gave him something I had picked up for me at Mumbai airport (the fact that I picked it up at the airport shows how much thought went into it), there was genuine affection in his eyes.

This trip was turning out to be a huge morale booster for me, in more ways than I could imagine.

The feather to the cap was my trip around Boston. The day I decided to see Boston was the day that it started snowing at 7 am and predictions were that the snowing would continue till around 5 pm. So I called a cabbie who had chauffeured me a couple of days back from Boston Airport to Billerica to drop me back at the airport. He ended up giving me a round trip of downtown Boston – he showed me whatever he could, given the weather, kept up a constant commentary of the sights and people and peculiarities. A 26 year old Jordanian by birth – looking much elder than that, the youngest of 15 kids, with a nephew who was 1 and a half years elder than him, his family ran a convenience store in downtown Boston and he had been driving a cab for 4months.

What made me trust this stranger enough to trust 3-4 hours of my life with him, I don’t know. He could have easily cheated me, harmed me, done a lot of unthinkable stuff…. But instead I ended up having a really good ride and engaging conversation with a stranger whom I would most probably never meet again in my life.. very much like my driver in Venezuela who showed me around and managed to have a conversation with me without him knowing English and me speaking no Spanish.


I have time and again been reminded by life that humanity and decency still inhabit our lives… we just have to open our hearts and arms to welcome it.