People in My Life

Clicked by me, Millesgården, Stockholm, Sweden, May 2012

Sometimes I feel a strange pleasure in surrounding myself with interesting people. People who are not ordinary. Not mundane. You might argue, rightfully, that everyone is interesting in their own way. Maybe. I come from the country of a billion people. Where even extraordinary is so common that it is ordinary. So pardon me if my measure of interesting is different from yours. Pardon me if I seem slightly superficial to you. Or maybe a bit too deep. But my kind of interesting interests me. If you know what I mean. To the extent that I go out of my way to surround myself with those people.

They are not all in one category. There is the IIM graduated banker with an enviable salary who is always kinda sad because of the feeling of not having achieved anything in life. And there is the single Swedish mother who has lived in Syria and is raising a half Persian daughter, lecturing about diversity in universities. And the half Indian-half Pakistani graduate hire in my company, born and brought up in Sweden, has never been to India, is yet so much more “desi” than a lot of desis I know who live back in their “des”. The childhood friend from my home town, who dropped out from school, has lost 2 jobs, and had a broken marriage and is still one of the most cheerful people I know of. Or the American work friend, who has been a gymnast, lived in a Kibbutz in Israel, studied in Japan and married a charming Uruguayan and is raising a family in Sweden. The Swedish colleague who left her career as a Project Manager in the IT industry to write a book on making European dresses from Indian Sarees. The rich magician’s daughter, who is an MBA graduate, has performed magic shows, dabbled with being a professional dancer, has been an internet entrepreneur and is now a consultant in a fancy international firm. The stranger mysteriously appearing on my google talk to tell me how I am a failure and have achieved nothing notable in life, that I am arrogant, conceited and full of myself, and then to tell me that he/she does not know me well, compares me with his/her successful corporate father and his friends and that he/she religiously follows my blog.... managing to dig out my identity and gtalk id while refusing to reveal his/her own identity... creepy, yes, but still interesting. I can go on and on.

I hear their stories and I secretly admire them. Some tell me that they have been called weird, strange, crazy and some other not-so-good things. But there are some things you cannot call them. Boring. Mundane. Ordinary. They are not that. Some of them tell me that sometimes they wish they were, their life would be so much simpler and easier that way. But in a way, I know that it is a gift. If they were ordinary, they would perhaps not be happy. And I am happy that I have them in my life. Sometimes just as an entry on my Facebook friend list. Sometimes as an integral part of my everyday life.

You guys make my life interesting!