New Zealand Travel Diary, Entry #9
I have not updated you since a week about events and happening in my Auckland life. Blame it on my laziness!
So, what has been going on? A couple days ago, a random guy walked up to me and said,
Guy: Hi, are you from India?
Me: No.
Guy: I see you a lot around the university and just wanted to introduce myself. It's a pleasure to meet you. I am from Bangladesh and doing Master's in Electrical Engineering.
Me: Oh cool, I am doing Electrical Engineering too, undergrad.
Guy: (bowing down) It's a pleasure to meet you.
Me: Ok.
And I walked away not sure of what to make of this rendezvous with a stranger. Has a random person ever walked to you and introduced himself extremely politely and said "It's a pleasure to meet you" twice? It made no sense. I mean, we always see some faces regularly yet we usually wait for an opportunity or someone to introduce the other person to us. That's the accepted social protocol. This one was clearly an outlier, an act of bold social protocol violation. I mulled over it and tried to come with some logical reasoning. Maybe I truly stood out in this more than 40,000 student population at this university and importantly, among 1000 or more students of Indian origin who may(or may not) look alike to outsiders.
But this did not convince me. I know my facial features are not unique because several people in the past (while I was in Nepal) have walked up to me saying I resemble their brother. I am serious. However, I let this event pass attempting to convince myself that I was special.
A few days later, I met this guy again. I said hello. He reciprocated and shook my hands rather softly and said,
You are looking good.
That felt uncomfortable, a lot more uncomfortable than the first meeting. Puzzles started unraveling and things started falling into place. That soft handshake and extreme politeness with a repeated "It's a pleasure to meet you" statements all pointed to his questionable sexuality. I tried resisting reaching this conclusion because Indian people usually do not express their homosexuality openly. I tried convincing my mind that the guy might be a genuinely nice guy just trying to make friends. But, I could not afford to take any risk, could I? The guy definitely seems to getting wrong ideas and his future looks bleak, to say the least. Since then, I have tried distancing myself from this particular individual of questionable sexuality. But, since we have classes in the same Engineering Building, that is not an easy task. Yesterday, despite my continuous efforts to avoid him, he gave me his mystic smile. I walked away not knowing how to respond.
OOh Dai! Your first Gay admirer... OOoooh ... Have all the fun while u can :P
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