Sharing Histories

I spent this morning in the childhood home of one of my good friends from grad school. He lives just a few hundred kilometers away from Mumbai and when I told him I was coming to India for a wedding, he made sure to encourage me to come and visit. Thus, I found myself at his house this morning, after a long and warm train ride through the night and that left me tired and sticky. The ticket in the air conditioned car cost about 4 times more, so I didn’t get it – but when the absolute difference is about 7USD, I guess it might make sense for me to reconsider. In any case, by this morning it was already too late, and I had only the hospitality of my friend and his parents (as well as a nice shower!) to look forward to.

It needs to be said. The shower was nice. The shower was refreshing. I like showers.

Equally nice though, was getting to meet Arun’s parents. Not only does his Mom make incredibly good Indian food, but they are both also very nice. I spent most of the morning chatting about all sorts of random topics with them, sharing past experiences, cultural observations, and getting travel advice. At one point, while Arun was showing me a map from his grade school geography book and his father, from his comfortable perch on a swinging chair hanging in the middle of his living room, chided him to use a better map, I thought to myself how wonderful it is to visit the homes of my friends from around the world.

The plain truth is that visiting the childhood homes of my friends has given me a window in their past and the influences that have made them who they are today in a way that no amount of late-night talks or bouts of drunken sharing could do. There is a limit to how deeply you can understand a person through just their description of their parents; the effects of meeting those same parents, even if just for a few minutes, cannot be duplicated. Likewise, it doesn’t matter how descriptive someone is about their past and their home – it takes seeing Trang’s stuffed teddy bear in the corner of her room, or the Arun’s high school, or Neema’s family room to begin to really understand why they are who they are today.

No doubt part of the reason I get such joy out of seeing where my friends grew up is the importance I put on “roots” – this amorphous notion that I seem to talk so much about. Just as I think you cannot ignore a person’s cultural background, I think it’s really important to understand a person’s personal history to be able to understand them. Seeing the conditions in which they grew up, the environment their parents provided them, the behavioral norms that they were raised is like a window into their personality today. I don’t think the influences of a home environment on a person can be over-emphasized. That’s why it gives me such great pleasure to be able to see where my friends come from. Plus, it’s just plain cool.

I realize that I have been incredibly lucky. To be able to see the homes of friends from places as far and wide as Hanoi, Hong Kong, Nairobi, and Gandhinagar, India is truly something remarkable. Moreover, to have such good friends in so many places who are willing to invite me into their homes is really heart-warming. I’m really thankful for being able to do so, and I hope that not only can I can continue to in the future, but that I can return the favor and have my good friends from around the world come visit me and my parents eventually!