It would have been strange if there had been no Indian that I met here in my first month. Almost at the fag end of it, we spotted a couple at the train station. Not every difficult to identify. We somehow, randomly and with a huge bias concluded that they were not living living but were here on a visit. Darn.
A couple of days later we were at our favourite Icecream joint, just on the street next to where we live/ We walked into the parlour, with a small lil icecream each and all loud, almost creating a cacaphony, discussing random things under the sun. The owner walked to the table and asked us where we come from. Sheepishly we replied Indian. He then gave a huge smile, looked back and said, 'He too is from India'.
Enter RInku. He gave us a huge smiled and started immediately in Hindi, almost confessing that he thought we were from Bangladesh since we spoke to each other only in English. We on the other hand couldnt stop smiling at him. It was so exciting to meet a living Indian and talk to him. I felt at home speaking all the time in Hindi and asking about him and telling him about us.
He works at the icecream parlour, has a family here, speaks a lot of German, owns a car and very very happy to be here. He too was excited to see us, and mentioned how much he contemplated talking to us or not and asking us where we were from. He also rattled of names of Indian shops and discos that we could visit.
When it was time to leave, he shook our hands and said a warm goodbye. He told us to keep visiting the icecream parlour!
Just the other day, when I bought an icecream, he took no money from me and said 'arey, le lo'. It was sweet but I felt bad. May just get him into trouble, I thought.
Whenever we cross the place, he always greets us and waves out as far as possible.
It was nice to meet Indian No. 1, lets hope there are many many more!
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