Zindagi.

Zindagi.


When i travel, i experience two of my favorite things.


My first favorite thing to do after getting of a plane is to stick my headphones in my ears and listen to music as i walk through the airport, get in the cab and watch the city around me. I've played the same play list for several years now - every time i'm on my way to the airport or on the way back home off the plane. It is my one point of familiarity when i arrive in a new place or when i am about set off to go to one.

My second favorite thing is to chance upon people and their stories which i inevitably always end up doing.

Last week when i arrived in City X, i stuck my headphones in, got into the cab and settled into watching the city go by. Mid-way through the song 'Cath,' the cab driver asked my why i was sitting in the front seat, it seems i had disrupted what he called his 'office space.' I pulled my earphones out and told him i got incredibly nauseous in the back seat.

An hour later, R, the cab driver hugged me good-bye, said he had 'much respect' and told me i was the strangest girl he had ever met in his life.

In the hour that i wasn't sticking my head in my own thoughts, Cab Driver R and i had talked about what people meant to us, what it felt like to be alone and how we we both wondered what home was. He said that as much as i thought it was okay to be by yourself, other people in our life made life worth living.

I laughed when he said that and told him that i guess it was true.

I thought about him and what he said to me the entire week i was in City X. I thought about how lonely it feels getting off the plane in new city after new city but having him talk to me made me go to bed that night - not with years of familiar songs in my head but with newer, funnier stories to think about.

I had always thought life was worth living just because it was life. I had never pushed that thought further. Cab Driver R may have had a point.

Five days later i was on my way back to the airport to fly back home. Cab Driver S came to pick me up at the hotel. It was going to be a long Saturday evening ride through the city to the airport. Cab Driver S was the son of an ex-Somalian ambassador to the U.S. He told me about 50 stories about his life and his travels. I laughed incredibly hard as he imitated friends he had made from all over the world. He told me about his travels to East Germany, India, France and a million other places. An hour and a half later, we said good-bye to one another and he wished me well in my "Zindagi" (yes, he knew some Hindi)

As i flew back home, the heaviness i had felt in my heart for many weeks finally lifted. I realized Cab Driver S had recounted countless stories about his travels but all of them were about the people he had experienced his life with. His stories weren't stories about the places he had lived in, there were about the people he had been with at the time.

Stories of life aren't just about life, Stories of life are stories of people that fill our life.


In the past, I've always enjoyed listening to people's stories when i chance upon them because i always felt so lucky being able to hear another story. I think there is more to it. I think it's one of my favorite things because on some level it adds one more person and their story to my person and my life.
It adds one more familiar point of reference, yet another experience with yet another person.


Zindagi.