Wednesday, July 11, 2007

My friend

In Indian culture, when men are good friends in India, they are a bit more "touchy" than we are in the states. I cannot remember the last time I hugged, or held the hand of a friend who was male... in fact I cannot remember holding hands with anyone who was not either "A" praying or "B" Theresa...

Being that I am not a touchy-feely guy, this was a surprise to me, but you know what they say, "When in Rome."

So everyday, this one kid waves to me and runs over to me and grabs my hand. Then he points to nowhere and we start walking... and I am thinking, "this is really weird, where are we going?" And the answer is "nowhere." We are going nowhere at all, and so I would kinda let it go for a couple minutes and then pull away and play with the other kids. Then one day I thought, "I will just go with it and see where it leads." And sure enough, we went nowhere, in fact, we went in circles. He would lead me by the hand and we walked around in circles. When we would come up to anyone he would grunt and point me out to them like a trophy
And this made no sense until I took an step back and thought about Indian culture. Today it clicked- he was showing everyone there that he had a friend and that friend was me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And what a good friend he has! Love reading all of your posts! Hope you are doing well! You guys are in our prayers! Lee, Becks and Ezra