An Act of Kindness

I had my first truly negative experience this weekend. On the whole, we had a spectacular time, but there is one moment that sticks in my mind as one of the worst of recent memory. But like most things, there is a golden and glistening moment at the end of it.

On our way home, we decided to stop in Somnathapura which houses one of the oldest temples in India, Kesava. We navigated our way across the Indian country side and parked in front of the temple. We paid our Rs. 200 and walked across the beautifully manicured gardens into the temple.

The temple itself was breathtaking. I was immediately reminded of my trips through Egypt with the detail of the carvings on this temple. We walked around, taking pictures and discussing whatever it is that Brad and I find to discuss. It was somewhat crowded and I decided that I didn’t want to get in the middle of the crowds and chose to sit in the shade on the outer perimeter of the temple and wait for Brad.

My seat offerered a wonderful view of the outside of the temple. As I sat, I watched the people coming and going. I watched the children running around. I listened to the rhythms of conversations around me. I reveled in the glory of the day, with the cerulean sky above me. I watched as a man approached me, with his head turned back to his friends. He was waving an arm at them, as if to shush them, while they watched me and laughed. He walked to the ledge I was sitting on and asked me what country I came from. I told him the US at which point he turned on his heel and went back to the group. I head him say “United States”, which made his whole group laugh even harder. I watched them for the next ten minutes as I waited for Brad to come out, doing my best to let them know how hurt I was that they would laugh at me, merely because of where I came from.

After a little while, a woman made her way over to me. She skirted around the column that I was leaning against and sat down next to me. She was remarkably close, but Indians seem to have less personal space than Americans, so I chose to think that she was merely behaving as an Indian would, and I should not be offended. She then called across the courtyard to her friends. They looked over at her and they all started laughing. She turned to me and started laughing in my face and looked back at her friends. They began to pull out cameras to take pictures of her sitting next to the American.

At this precise moment, Brad walked out of the temple. I stood up quickly and headed out of the main door, meeting him outside by our shoes. I burst into a tirade, ranting about how Indians are not as hospitable as they are made out to be. One of the girls who laughed at me watched as I tried to let out all of my anger at the situation. I could see, at least I’d like to think I could see, some remorse at her actions. As you could imagine, Brad became very upset because I was so upset and we spent the better part of the next hour doing our best to soothe my ego.

A few hours later, we found ourselves in a small town 50 kilometers outside of Bangalore. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and we were both famished, as breakfast had been sparse that morning. We parked the car and wandered through the town in an attempt to find a restaurant that was non-veg. A small sign directed us through a small passageway and up a very tiny flight of stairs at the back of a building. We walked into a room that was mostly empty. Half of the room had no tables or chairs.

The gentleman at the door must have not spoken any English because he went into the kitchen and brought out an older gentleman. He had white hair and was wearing a white tank top with a cloth wrapped around his waist. He motioned to the menu board and told us that they didn’t have everything on the menu prepared yet. He listed a few of the things they did have and we both settled on the chicken biriyani. He smiled, genuinely, at the both of us and invited us to have a set.

The meal was fantastic, one of the best I’ve had here, and was over very quickly, mostly because we were so hungry that we didn’t speak to each other. We wen to the main desk to pay and the same gentleman came back out of the kitchen. We thanked him and told him that the meal was extraordinary. He smiled and charged us Rs. 60, or $1.33, for the whole meal. We thanked him again and he in turn thanked us for our patronage. We started out the door and he asked us to come again. We turned and stated that we would. He looked us both in the eye and repeated his request. “Please, come back again.” He was so sincere and so kind that I felt as if I were floating out of the restaurant.

In a small town in India, at the top of a small set of stairs, there is a small man, with an enormous heart, who is waiting to serve you a meal that nourishes so much more than your belly. I hope that we’ll be able to go back again, if for no other reason than to thank this man. He is probably not educated. He had probably lived within the same few blocks his whole life. But he had enough wisdom to see that we were just a pair of travelers who meant no harm. He had enough wisdom to know that the color of our skin doesn’t designate our political leanings. He had enough wisdom to know how far a kind word can go.