Kindness

Finding your place in a new job, a new neighborhood or new country is never easy. Here in Hubli, I can’t speak or read the language. I often find myself disoriented by everything from getting milk in a bag that I need to boil to remembering to make sure that I have water to shower with. Luckily, I have been able to depend on the kindness of absolute strangers. In Hubli, no one is a stranger for long as everyone is so willing to open themselves to you.

Having so many instances where I feel so out of my element, I find it hard to articulate the feeling that comes when someone senses that I am having trouble and comes to assist me. While heading to a meeting with a company in Hubli on my own, I found myself unable to locate the office. As I was speaking on the phone to the person I was meant to meet with, describing what I could see, a random man grabbed my phone from me.

As he began to speak into it – and I began to worry he was going to take my phone – another man came to ask if I needed help. Between the two of them, they found where I needed to be and hand delivered me to my appointment.  Upon finishing, I realized I needed to catch the bus home. I would need flag down the correct bus to take me back to the office, but as everything was in Kannada, I was at a bit of a loss.  I guess that read on my face, because suddenly an old man was asking me where I was trying to go. We got on the next bus together, he helped me pay and told me when to get off, all well telling me about his family in Dharwad and his new grandchild.

Operating as a translator and guide is not the only way I’ve found help when I’ve needed it here. My neighbor, who does not appear to speak a word of English, has shown herself to be surprisingly supportive when we need her. While sometimes I think she questions our capacity to survive, she is always responsive to our resourceful pantomimes of everything from “Our power is out, is yours?” to “I can’t shut off the faucet, please help!”  She has brought over watermelon to share with us, as well as sweets after she’s watched me slip in our wet courtyard.

Each day I become more and more confident in my abilities to navigate Hubli, and each day I accomplish one more thing on my own that I used to need someone else to help me with.  None of these new skills could have come without someone else helping me along the way, whether that is through learning a new word for what I want to communicate or being given a piece of chocolate for moral support. Having so many strangers who are willing to guide me through all the new aspects of my life has made it infinitely easier and more colorful.