Sirens and Lights

If there is one thing that I have realized these last few months, it’s how much I’ve been relying on “the kindness of strangers.” From the first day that I landed in Geneva to be greeted by Carley, the Bryn Mawr alum who offered me free housing and yummy food, to the medical student who walked me out to the main road in Vellore to find me an autorickshaw and negotiate a fair price in Tamil for me when I missed the last bus home to Bagayam, the successes of my adventures have been in large part because there are so many people out there who just want to help. It’s kind of reassuring to realize that even if you’re all alone, it’s not that you can’t still ask for help and actually receive it! So, when my roommate last night said that she wanted to pick up her friend at the airport at 4 am in Chennai, but that she didn’t want to go in the taxi alone there at night, I decided that it was my turn to help out a friend and went with her…whew. long night sleeping in a TATA Sumo (a little SUV) as the driver blared Tamil and Hindi filmi music, fighting the fiesty women at the airport to get into the bathroom (a hole in the ground behind a curtain…and we had to pay for it, too!!), munching on KitKats and little Indian wafers to stay awake…and finally surprising her friend. It was craziness, but you have to love the adventure…

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2003 at 12:20 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.