Notes on Strangers on my Couch.

I offer couch to strangers like you. In exchange, you offer stories. It's a fair deal.

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Magda:

You were the first. Trusting you came easy, I guess it was the same for you. I wonder if it is only the prospect of a free shelter and food that brings two strangers from half way across the globe together. Humanity never ceases to amaze me.

You arrived at midnight; when the June's sweltering Delhi day had been lulled to behave. I was amused that you expected me to be, not what I was: a tiny girl, clad in summer shorts and a vest. "Not very Indian", you probably intended to say, but replaced your words carefully with a more polite euphemism: "Independent".

You stayed 4 days. You ate nothing hot and spicy. You refused to carry a cell phone. You insisted on travelling in atrocious DTC buses to Old Delhi. You befriended a strange man in Jama Masjid and accepted his invitation to visit his family. You got scared out of your wits when there was a power cut in his ghetto like home and thought this was the end of your life as you knew it. You smiled and dismissed your fears when the power came back and his sisters most hospitably served you tea and samosas. You visited the Toilet Museum!! (I did not even know that existed!) You came home to narrate to me with most animated gesticulations, each and every moment of your ordeal, with such perspicacity, that I could feel your excitement percolate through my very heart.

You carried only full sleeved shirts because of your preconceived ideas of the conservative India. We shopped at the Sarojini Nagar Market for some more summer-friendly outfits and for the next one hour I pointed out to you every Indian girl who would walk past in a spaghetti strapped top. We watched a movie together. We talked about men, and it was reassuring to know that the experiences with love are uniform across the globe. You later asked me which one I would choose between a man who is a great father, and husband and a man who is a great lover, both exclusive of each other. To which my most honest response was, "I can take care of the kids myself." And we laughed it off for the next ten minutes.

Before you left, you thanked me for dispelling the stereotypes you harboured about India and for accommodating you. I never thanked you for opening my eyes to the world around me.

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Kang Kang:

Your season was the rains. How I wished I had spent more time with you. As Murphy would have it, you had to endure the worst conditions: the pouring rain not allowing you to explore as much as you'd probably desired to, the plumbing and water condition at home going wrong and my being occupied with work mostly. But I never sensed you regretting your choice of staying with me instead of a hostel/hotel.

You stayed 5 days. We talked over breakfast mostly. You loved the milk shake that I prepared and asked me for its recipe. You took a train to Bangalore, but e-mailed me later to inform me that you got off the train at some quaint old South-Indian town that I forget the name of, to go to an ashram, which you overheard some people talk about on the train.

You are an English teacher in China, and yet you struggled to convince me of the earnestness of your gratitude. "Thank you very much dear, we Chinese people are not very good at expressing ourselves." You did just fine.

It is only much later, after I visited China, that I noticed how different you seemed to be from the rest of your kind; from the majority in China who like structure and avoid risks, who refuse to connect with people who are "different".

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Katie:

When we met, we were both warding off the same demons. You tackled them by embracing a real adventure, and I by embracing escapism. You spent four months travelling all over South East Asia: Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, Thailand and then India.

We talked while we painted our nails a bright shade of blue. We treated ourselves to ice-cream at India Gate at midnight. We rolled our eyes at the inane and bizarre attempts of Indian men at propositioning exotic women. We ate kebabs at Khan Market and you told me about your little vacation romance with a hapless young, rockstar-of-a-lad from Nepal. And I shared with you the curious incident of my life which involved falling in love with a Nepalese man. At the thought of romance, we mused, and at the loss of it, we bonded.

We rub shoulders sometimes on our Facebook walls. We don't interact much, other than "liking" a picture or status of either, once in a while. But when you went back, you left me a message: "My toe is still blue from when we painted our nails together, and so a part of you is still with me here in San Francisco."

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Mirko:

I could have fallen in love with you. I did, a little bit. And I know, you did too, a little bit. You were every bit the arrogant German I'd heard of. Your experience with India had been awful, and I believe you weren't lying when you said that I was the most "fun" part of your Indian trip.

You called me the crazy little Indian girl. You thought it stupendous that I would work for hours at a stretch and could still be dressed up and about to go out at night. We danced all of Saturday night. We got lost driving around in the labyrinths of central Delhi in the wee hours, with no regrets. You tested my Spanish speaking skills and teased me like an old pal.

I convinced you against going to the Taj Mahal with a weird Indian man you met through Couchsurfing. (Somehow all weird men have found their way to Couchsurfing). My bad. But in my defence, he was indeed quite a weirdo. Now I see that I had put up my most judgmental glasses on, while you were around. The strange man showed up at my door at 5 a.m. to pick you up for Agra. You told him you won't go.

Well, as it turned out, you traveled to Agra on your own, in a passenger train, and made it to the main gate just in time for it to be shut down for the day; you were denied the wondrous sight. Karma bites, I know. But hey, bad experiences make for wonderful stories.

An hour before you left, you got us a bottle of red wine. We trespassed my neighbour's terrace, climbed on top of my roof and balanced ourselves on the parapet. We drank wine and giggled incredulously about your little Indian (mis)adventure. We never kissed.

Before you left, you said: "If two people meet once in life, there is a 95% probability that they would meet again." I wondered where you got your statistics from and hoped you got them right. We said goodbye. We catch a fleeting glimpse of each other's life on our virtual walls; our interaction limited to "pokes" that we surreptitiously throw at each other on Facebook.

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You are all a lot more than strangers, a little more than acquaintances, but a little lesser than friends.

Through your experiences, I have vicariously trekked the Annapurna Ranges; been lost in Egyptian desserts; taught English to street kids in a quaint, old Tamilian town; attended the Burning Man.

Through your eyes, I have seen a little more. Through your adventures, I have lived a little more. In your company, I have reveled a little more.

I am the quintessential armchair traveler. Someday, I will take myself out of this armchair, and I hope the 5% chance of not meeting you ever again, does not get the better of me.