My First Foreign Friend

Picture: A view of our train car on the way to Kochi. Vinu--my 'new foreign friend'--can be seen in the foreground on the left.

Jenna and I jogged down the train platform, hurriedly looking for our car number. We had one chance to get out of Tirur for this three-day weekend. We desperately did not want to miss it.

We dodged through milling crowds of waiting people and juked past other commuters disembarking from the Allepey Express which had just pulled into the Tirur station and would start up again any second, chugging south towards Kochi.

Then, just as the train whistle blasted to warn passengers of its imminent departure, I spotted what we were looking for: D1. The number of our car. We reached the car and hopped on board as the whistle blasted a second time. A few seconds later, the train jerked forward and began its huffing journey down the tracks.

We got Friday off from school due to the national Diwali holiday (India’s ‘festival of lights’), and we had made plans to spend the weekend in Kochi (formerly Cochin), Kerala’s largest city and its biggest tourist draw. Though we appreciated the simple comforts of Tirur, we had been looking forward to getting away all week. Hence, the jogging and the desperate search for car D1.

It would take four hours to get to Kochi. We settled into our seats in the middle of the packed second-class car and began to watch the tropical scenery roll by outside the grated windows. Keralites proudly call their native state ‘God’s Own Country’, a conceit borne of the lush countryside and natural beauty of the land. As if God would want to live anywhere else.

The train ride made me appreciate the Keralites’ pride a little more: swaying palm trees overhanging plush carpets of green jungle grass and rice paddies; meandering streams and lazy rivers cutting through idyllic farmland; bamboo huts around a bend; stucco houses with red-tile roofs stuck purposefully in the midst of jungle glades; an emerald hue cast to everything. The rain that began to fall an hour into the journey did not diminish this atmosphere but only added to its richness.

The train itself was packed. Many of the passengers were on their way to Thrissur—between Tirur and Kochi—a big festival center in Kerala that hosts many different celebrations between November and May. All the seats were filled and people stood in the aisles and at either end of the long car, milling near the doorways.

As inevitably happens in any public space in India, I got into a conversation. The young man sitting across from us leaned forward mid-way through the journey and asked where I was from. This led to a discussion that lasted us the next two hours. His name was Vinu, and he was a college student studying computer engineering in Calicut, a city north of Tirur. He was making his way back home for Diwali to visit his family near the Kochi airport, north of the main city.

“I was nervous to talk to you,” Vinu admitted after a while, with a smile. I gave him a questioning look. “I have never talked to an American before. I am afraid my English not so good. Maybe you would laugh at me.”

I patted him on the back, “I can understand you just fine. You’re doing great.” He nodded his head appreciatively. This reassurance seemed to prod him into deeper topics, which we discussed up to the limits of Vinu’s more-than-adequate English.

He talked of his family and how he was the oldest of three children. He was studying computer engineering in the hopes of getting a well-paying job after graduation. “My father is a tailor and my mother helps him. As the oldest child, it is my responsibility to help them when they retire. I will work for a while. Then, I come back here and live with them when they are old.”

Vinu said there were not very many good jobs in the technology field in Kerala. “I will have to go to Bangalore most likely. But for any good job, you have to know English well. That is the first thing they do in interviews: ask you about your English and test your skills.”

I told him that must put him under a lot of pressure—the twin responsibilities he feels to take care of his parents and learn English. He wanly smiled: “Yes, but I can manage. There is a lot of opportunity.”

Our talk digressed into politics (“Obama is coming here, nahn?” Vinu said brightly) and movies (“I hated Slumdog Millionaire. It showed only the worst of India.”). Vinu asked about America—where I was from, what I did before coming to India, when Jenna and I got married.

“America is a dream place,” he said. “That is how we think of it. Any Indian who goes there…never comes back,” he said laughing. “You can come here to India and leave easily. But you go to America: you can’t leave.”

He said he would like to go to America someday just to visit, and I asked him wouldn’t that tempt him to leave his parents? He smiled: “No way. Can’t leave them. Even for America.”

After what seemed like only ten minutes but what had actually been more than two hours, Vinu’s stop came. “I must leave, but I wanted to ask you something…” he said, as he rose to retrieve his backpack from the overhead bin. “Would you like to come to my brother’s wedding?”

I was shocked. “Sure,” I said. He handed us an invitation in a cream-colored envelope with cursive read writing. “It will be in Calicut. It would be great if you could come,” he said simply.

Then he waved as the train slowed down. “Goodbye. You are my first foreign friend,” he said shaking my hand. “But hopefully not my last.”