The mere fact that we don't know and haven't met and talked earlier makes one a stranger?
When can we tell that we 'know' a person and hence is no more a stranger to us?
And...how long do you take to 'know' a person?
Sometimes we get into a conversation with the co-passengers in trains or flights, with the shop keeper and the taxi driver. The apparent strangers seem like friends of bygone days. We really have so much to share and talk about!
And sometimes we bump into friends of bygone days and don't know what to talk next. The friends seem like strangers.
What if the co-passenger (the stranger) in the flight I was talking with turns out,at the end of the journey, to be my primary school friend ?
Divorced couple behave like strangers to each other, though they have shared many a memorable moments of their life together.
Yesterday's strangers can be today's neighbours and friends.
So, the words "strangers", "friends" and "neighbours" are very relative terms to me.
In a way, everybody is a stranger as we dont really understand any other person.
At the same time, quite contradictorily, perhaps, none is a stranger. When we talk with any other person, however apparent stranger he or she may be, we realise that there are some common things we both can relate to - there is a bit of me in the stranger and a bit of the stranger in me! Irrespective of caste, creed and colour, there lies some underlying truths and facts in life that prevents us from being a complete stranger to any other person. On the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg, when my friend from Cranfield University, Adrian narrated to me his childhood days spent in a certain town in New Zealand, I could relate that with mine.
Every person - every so-called stranger - has a world of his or her own. The life and world of an Indian taxi driver in Melbourne is so different from the room-boy who works in a certain hotel in Hardwar, India, which is again different from the old man in the wheel chair in the aisles in WalMart...the list of strangers I met and interacted with is endless. When I talked to them and got a glimpse of their life, I was enriched. Each had a fascinating tale to tell.
This is what makes me take a different angel to "strangers". Each has a different perception about the world, each sees the world in his or her own way and each has so engrossing experiences to share. If only we could have biographies of everyone in this universe!
I am a stranger to so many people, and that includes the readers of this blog. But, that they read (and sometimes even appreciate my blogs) is a proof of the fact that we somehow connect to each other.We are not as much strangers as we think we are.
Our immediate friends, relatives and neighbours have the world that are more or less similiar to ours. It is the strangers from whom we can get the flavour of familiar and yet unknown worlds, universal and yet very much personal world.
Leave alone everybody else, do we understand ourselves fully? Do we know what we want and what we dont?
Are we not strangers to ourselves at times?
