Category: Interesting Strangers

The Girls Visiting Indian Boyfriends

Posted on by Kai Raine

As a teen, I would often converse with the person in the seat beside me. On two separate occasions, I met girls with very similar stories: they were in their twenties and visiting boyfriends in India that they had gotten to know over email. One was a German girl dating a Muslim boy; the other was an American girl dating a Hindu boy. I met them approximately three years apart, but it never ceases to astonish me how similar their stories seemed.

They had gotten to know their boyfriends through some interaction on a website, and ended up swapping emails. After that, they had corresponded for a time, getting to know each other (and falling in love). The boyfriends, in both cases, had visited the girls in their home countries once. In both cases, I was meeting the girls on their first trip to India—though I met the German girl on her flight to India and the American girl on her flight back to the US.

Both of them had a lot to say on the subject of the obstacles that lay in their paths in the form of religion. I listened, but it wasn’t a subject that was very interesting to me at the time, beyond analyzing the cultures and why people insist on laying those obstacles before inter-religious and inter-racial relationships.

Both girls were fascinated when I said that I was the product of such a marriage, and were fascinated to hear my parents’ story. They expressed surprise when I explained that my parents simply got married, neither of them being particularly attached to religion or cultural tradition. They would then go on to wonder aloud whether their boyfriend would be willing to entertain this as a possibility (both of them found it doubtful).

I met the German girl first, when I was fifteen. She was cynical, fairly certain it wouldn’t work out in the end. Perhaps because I met her first, she had much wisdom and many observations to share that I had never before thought to consider. I was still in my youthful fairy tale mind, convinced that love could conquer all. She was very laid back, and willing to foster the relationship for as long as it lasted, even if it was not going to be for life, or even for that much longer.

The American girl was more specifically critical in her assessment of her situation. “Why can’t he just say no to his parents?” she would complain to me. “I don’t know if I can live with a man who can’t stand up to his parents.” She then went on to exposit about the differences between American and Indian culture,* naming things that were very familiar to me and leaving me to shrug and smile. I offered some advice based on observations I had made, but I got the impression that she wasn’t interested in my opinion as much as she just wanted to vent.

I kept in touch with the German girl for a few years afterwards; the American girl and I went our separate ways after our flights and never corresponded. I do know that the first girl’s relationship lasted through that trip and for some months afterwards before her boyfriend caved to his parents and broke things off.

*I am aware that both of these are very culturally diverse nations. This is meant to indicate the experiences of India and American culture as lived by myself and this one girl. It is not meant to be a generalization.

No One Needs to Know Who I Am

Posted on by Kai Raine

When I was in university, I went through a phase that lasted about half a decade where I was extremely cynical of strangers wanting to know who I was or about my life.

This was in the late 2000s; I had finally acquired a Facebook account and learned that anyone could Google me and acquire more information about me than I necessarily wanted to provide. I’d always been somewhat talkative with random people I met on public transportation, beginning with a nice man who sat next to me when I was 6 and flying alone for the first time. Now I was growing more wary of offering any identifying information about myself to strangers. My name in particular is so unique and identifiable that I decided it was best not to give it to strangers. Sometimes I offered alternative pronunciations of my name; sometimes I used fake names.

It quickly turned into a game of playing pretend. I wouldn’t contradict any assumption made about me. I also didn’t want to explain my whole life story to random people, so I would pick a country and find ways to make it sound as though I was only from that place without actively lying.

It was a fun game.

But this also created more distance between me and the people I met. The conversations were fun, but I never stayed in touch with any of them. If anyone gave me their contact information, I threw it away. I never really remembered anything meaningful from the conversations. During, I was busy spinning my own tale and only superficially listening to the other person’s side of the conversation. Once we parted, I would forget everything: my own story and the other person’s.

I eventually stopped doing this as a rule because it began to feel tedious and burdensome. I was doing it in large part because I didn’t want to make conversation, I realized. It was all well and good as a strategy as long as it was fun, but once the fun was gone, there was no more point in continuing this, I thought. In that case, it was far easier to answer in monosyllables and communicate through non-verbals that I wasn’t interested in conversation. If I choose to make conversation with strangers, I now figure, it may as well be either sincere or enjoyable. Sometimes, it’s even both.

My Move to India, or How I Got Conned

Posted on by Kai Raine

In Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, there’s a paragraph where the main character remembers on the stupid decisions made by herself and her friend at the age of fifteen. She reflects that people should be locked up for a year at that age in a paragraph that seemed puzzling as a teenager, and then grew funnier and funnier as I distanced myself from my teenage self and headed into my twenties.

Here’s a piece of my own fifteen-year-old idiocy.

I flew to Hyderabad, India from Buffalo, New York to rejoin my parents and sisters. I had begun the trip as an unaccompanied minor, under the care of flight attendants, but as you may have read last week, in Doha it was forgotten that I was an unaccompanied minor and I ended the trip on my own. For the most part, I was happy about it. But naive as I was, it did leave me open to getting conned.

Immigration went without a hitch, but at customs, I got pulled aside. I was traveling with one or two large suitcases. A suitcase was marked with chalk, and I was told that because of those markings, I had to go talk to the customs officer at the desk. I went over to the desk.

The man behind the desk asked me if I was traveling with electronics.

“Not many,” I said. Just some cords and a phone. (Why I was carrying a phone in my suitcase I don’t really remember.)

“You have to pay a tax for electronics,” the man told me.

My heart skipped a beat and then started to pound. I envisioned losing everything in my suitcase. “I didn’t know that.”

The man named a sum of money that I was supposed to pay. Terrified that I would have to give up my entire suitcase, I went through the contents of my wallet. I don’t remember how much I had, but I think it was more or less $50. Whatever it was, it was less than he had told me to pay, even if I converted it into rupees.

“I don’t have that,” I told him. “But my parents will have come to pick me up. I could ask them for the money. Can I just leave and get the money and come back?”

“You can’t come back if you leave the secure area,” he told me, “and you can’t take this suitcase without paying the tax.”

“But I can’t pay,” I confessed. “I only have US dollars.”

“That’s no problem. How much do you have?” he asked me.

“Only fifty dollars,” I admitted.

“Well, I’ll let you off this time,” he said magnanimously with a smile. “But you know next time, you should carry more cash.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling terribly relieved. I handed him what money I had.

“So your parents are picking you up, then?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” I told him, now talkative with relief.

“Your parents are American?”

“Well, yes, but my father is from India,” I told him, and happily explained how we had moved around and ended up moving to Hyderabad purely by coincidence. The customs officer nodded and smiled as he listened, and I felt reassured. Eventually, I finished my story and confirmed that it was okay that I now leave.

As soon as I got out of the secure area, I met my father. I told him about the nice customs officer who had let me pay a reduced tax on the electronics because I hadn’t had the money.

My father frowned.

“Did you ask for a receipt?” he said.

I blinked and said I hadn’t.

“You were conned,” he said bluntly. “There is no tax. Think about it: have you ever heard of a tax like that? And if it had been a tax, why would they let you go without paying in full? This sort of thing is common in India: people will try to trick you into giving them money. You’re going to have to learn to be more street smart. You should always ask for a receipt.”

Oh, how foolish I felt.

The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 3)

Posted on by Kai Raine

On the last day of the conference, a few fellow conference goers asked me about where I was staying. We were talking over lunch at an affordable Chinese place not too far from the fancy hotel that served as the conference venue.

“It’s a hostel that’s filthy and smells like pot,” I responded. “And it’s a mile downhill from here. And for a floor of twenty plus rooms, there’s one shower, one toilet, and one bathroom whose lights don’t work, making it useless. The only way I ever shower or use the bathroom is if I’m up at an odd hour of night. Which I am. Because I’m still jetlagged.”

“Ugh,” one of them grimaced. “Sounds awful.”

“It’s not, really,” I shrugged. “It was the cheapest private room I could find, so I wasn’t expecting much. And the guy who runs the place? He’s awesome and makes it all worth it. I love talking to him.”

“Sounds like someone has a crush,” one of them teased. I rolled my eyes.

“The dude’s like sixty.”

“An old man crush, then.”

I struggled to explain, then, how much I relish it when I meet another person able to have random conversations unbound by the tethers of reality and preexisting social constructs. I tried to demonstrate by starting to talk about dragons. One of my companions joined that conversation briefly before it devolved into a discussion of whether a dragon would melt Elsa (from Disney’s Frozen) or Elsa would freeze the dragon. (I maintain that the dragon would melt Elsa.)

I was really looking forward to talking with Ricardo* again. Every conversation we’d had had been so much fun.

So, of course, the day that I left, all our interactions were run of the mill. I took my suitcase down to check out and store it in the office just as it was opening. I had gone to sleep too early the day before and had woken up at midnight and been unable to go back to sleep. I probably looked a bit like a zombie.

By the time I came back from the post-conference class to reclaim my suitcase, I was feeling lightheaded with exhaustion and weak with hunger. I think we may have had a short discussion in which the suitcase was a hostage, but I don’t quite remember.

It was an underwhelming goodbye to what had been a very entertaining acquaintanceship.

*Not his real name.

The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 2)

Posted on by Kai Raine

On day 2 of the conference, I walked up the hill through the rain to attend the 6am coffee session. After that, still pretty damp, I attended panel after panel. I’d forgotten my phone in the hostel, so after lunch (just as I was starting to feel dry) I rushed back to the hostel to grab it, and then back to the hotel. By 3pm, I was feeling exhausted and exceedingly chilled. By 4pm, I was just sitting working on editing my manuscript in the hope that I would feel refreshed after a little writing. It didn’t work, and by 5pm I could taste the sleep in my mouth. Even though I’d just started to feel dry again, I decided it was time to go back to the hostel.

The walk through the cold and the rain woke me up, but not enough. The walk made me feel manic with excess energy, yet I was ready to go straight to bed. I remembered that I had an upcoming conundrum: I wanted to attend a class on Monday that went from 9am to noon, but I had to check out by 11 that morning. I remembered that there had been a guy who left his suitcase in the office on the day I’d arrived and was wondering if I might do the same.

I climbed up the staircase to the first storey. I looked down the hallway and saw that that the man from the hostel was at the desk behind the window. I darted over.

“I have a question!” I announced.

“I may have an answer,” said the man.

“It’s a very dramatic question.”

“Then I’ll have a very dramatic answer.”

“Can I leave my suitcase with you after I check out on Monday?”

“Ooh!” he said, waving his hand in the air and practically bouncing in his chair. “I know the answer! Pick me! Pick Ricardo*!” He briefly stopped waving his hand in the air to explain to me, “That’s me, I’m Ricardo.”

“I’m picking Janine,” I said flatly.

“Aww,” he pouted, crossing his arms. “You always pick Janine. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Janine,” I said anyway.

Ricardo pitched up his voice. “I don’t know, ask Ricardo!” Then, back to his regular voice, “See? Told you so.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “Ricardo, then.”

“Yes, you can leave you suitcase here,” he said. “For the bargain price of five dollars.”

“Gasp,” I said. “That’s practically robbery.”

He laughed, but I was already moving on to thinking further logistics.

“So can I come back for the suitcase at any point during the day?” I asked.

“You can, but not after 11:30, for the simple reason that I’ll be asleep.”

“11:30 at night,” I checked.

“Yes, 11:30 at night.”

“That’s not a problem, I’ll be back before then.”

“Great! Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Nope, that’s it. Thank you so much!”

“No problem. Have a good one!”

“You too!”

I ambled up the stairs. By the time I reached the top, I was once again ready to climb into bed and fall straight to sleep.

*Name is changed for reasons of privacy.

The Quirky Hostel Manager (Pt. 1)

Posted on by Kai Raine

I dragged my larger-than-necessary suitcase from Powell Station to the hostel on 6th. I’d just flown in from Tokyo for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference that started the next day. I was exhausted and my phone was not making my day any easier: the battery would lose charge like sand through a sieve, and it would intermittently decide that it had no data capabilities. So I’d memorized the way as best I could and hoped for the best.

When I reached the intersection where the hostel was supposed to be, I saw that the building on the corner was under construction. I felt a little anxious—was this the wrong place, after all?—but was too tired to worry too much. I walked around the construction site and there it was: an unassuming townhouse painted in red accented with yellow and a small sign over the door that said “Europa Hostel.”

There was just a door and an intercom, so I rang the bell. A muffled man’s voice responded, but I couldn’t understand what he’d said.

“Hi,” I said instead. “Is this the Eur-”

“Pull the door towards you,” said the man’s voice, slowly this time. “And turn the handle.”

The door buzzed and I did as I was told. The door opened to a steep, narrow staircase. I struggled up the stairs with my suitcase, turning 2 corners just to reach the first floor. At the landing, the staircase continued on my left, so I looked down the hallway to my right. At the end of the hallway was a window that seemed to be the reception. Two young men with German(-ish*) accents were checking in, a process that was made extra complicated by the fact that they could not remember which name the booking had been under.

I stood in line behind them.

The man behind the window finished checking them in and handed them their card keys. He gave them the run down of the place, which was fairly standard.

“I don’t care what you smoke,” he finished. “But smoke it outside.”

The men gave a startled laugh and thanked him. Just as I stepped forward, another man came up the staircase behind me.

“You here for your bag?” asked the man behind the window, ducking out of the room.

“Yes,” said the new man, with an Indian(-ish) accent. “And can you call me a taxi?”

The door next to the window opened and the man from the hostel brought out a black suitcase.

“You’re a taxi,” he said very seriously as he handed the suitcase over.

The guest took his bag and looked a little confused.

“Can you call me a taxi?” he repeated.

“Yes,” sighed the man from the hostel. “It’ll arrive out front.”

“Thank you,” said the guest and left.

The man from the hostel ducked back inside and emerged momentarily back at the desk behind the window.

“People just don’t get American humor,” he lamented to me as he pushed buttons on the phone without looking.

It took me a good ten minutes to check in after that, because we kept getting side-tracked with conversation.

*My recognition of accents is highly unreliable. Take my accent-approximations with many grains of salt.