Of Stranger Conversations

Long ago, my cousin had expressed to me her unwillingness to engage in conversations with fellow passengers in mail or express trains over long distances. "Once you begin to entertain them, you have to follow all the social obligations - smile at them, enter into conversations, offer your food, accept their foods, accommodate requests regarding changing positions, seats, sleeping places, offering window seat if you don't want to..." I could not agreeingly share more disgust - this common culture of bonding over long distance train travel that were once common (and still are, despite much people now take flights) for middle and lower class people in India, is often discussed for how sociality is so easily produced within the millieu of india. The talks in such conversation, primarily among middle aged heterosexual married women, or men, are about long laments and languishes of family life, introductions to relationships, places and people, movements and migrations and such other small talk. I have largely abhorred these discussions, as they seldom have any content, merely initiated for timepass. These are small talks over an extended time in a forced situation which strangers cannot escape. These conversations hold strangehood in the fake cover of familiarity - an assumed sameness amongst strangers that holds the awkwardness of the moment. Here, banal conversations are made with utmost interest and concern, with no expectations and with the full knowledge that these would have no futures. I am intrigued about how these strangerhoods are performed, what content gets shared, what backgrounds get assumed, and what questions get asked. There are no stakes in such conversations - they are free reeling exchanges of everyday nothings.

I began to think about all this just because one such characeters, a man, began to speak to me over my short train  journey back from Nashik to Mumbai. As i settled in my seat within the train, he - a middleaged guy, waited for a few minutes, until he broke into conversation: "So you are going to travel until the last stop?"

I said, "Not the last, one before...I get down at Dadar"

"That's the last one..."

"That's not technically the last, because the train goes ahead until CST."

"Ah yes"

"So you live in Nashik"

"No I was here for work"

"Ah, you were sent by your company?"

"No. I came by myself"

"What do you do?"

"I am an architect. I was here to write about a building"

"Okay" (gives a blank look)

I smile

"What about you, what brought you to Nashik?"

"I was worshipping Shirdi and Trimbakeshwar"

"I hope it went well"

"Shirdi was very organised, Trimbakeshwar was messy?"

"So was Shirdi crowded?" I asked 

"I was in the general line, but then i upgraded myself to the VIP line by giving 200 Rs."

"Ah okay"

"I was in Nashik the day before - i went to Panchvati, to other ghats, and then went to Shirdi"

"Okay" (by this point, i was already getting bored, since I had no interest in any of these details, neither did i know why was he telling me all this)

"So you are married?"

As much as i was taken aback, I obliged and answered "No, I am single"

"Okay, i went with my wife and kid"

"Okay"

"So you are not from Nashik"

"Yes, I am from Mumbai"

"Okay, so you were sent by your company..." (somehow his worldview could not digest the fact why I was in Nashik alone, by myself)

"I teach architecture in a school, I am a professor. I write independently on buildings, hence I was here"

"Okay, so you are a writer?"

"Yes" (I didnot know how more to enlighten this seemingly educated man).

"So where in Mumbai are you from...." (he was still trying to grapple why was I in Nashik)

"I live in Goregaon"

"Okay, so you are from Mumbai?"

"I mean, I am Marwari, and I have grown up in Mumbai."

"I am from Bihar, but I live in Mumbai" he said

"Ah ok, which place?"

"xxxx, do you know?"

"Yes, my native place is in Bihar, i mean Jharkhand now"

"Where?"

"Dhanbad, I was born there"

"Okay."

and then he was interrupted by someone, and i took the opportunity to turn away from him, and think, of why was I lending all these personal details and what would he do with these? but more than that, I began to think, what questions do we ask people in our first meeting? What first questions shall we ask a random stranger? And through these - his first interrogations started appearing to me more and more offensive - I kept asking myself,  'why on earth would he ask me if i was married?' and then I began to think about the heteronormal construct of this world, and how lives of hetero middle aged men and women largely take same trajectories, same aspirations - of finding a company job, having kids, managing kids, visitng pilgrimages together on the name of outings, asserting hope through the assertion of common faith... What is the politics of this assumption? And could this assumption be a form of ignorance in itself?

I kept thinking and thinking until i came to write this post, that i perhaps want to develop into something more substantial. But in the mean time, i leave this for more discussion. Please respond in comments if you have come across such unexpected contemplations....