Summer 2010 [part 3]

Making Friends

Dr. Binay was from Nepal, the Hindu himalayan kingdom, which recently became a republic. He was a high caste hindu, a Brahmin i.e priestly caste. He was supposed to be a vegetarian, as all the Brahmins are, but he was not. He was fair skinned, looked more Indian than Nepali. He had completed his Medical School from Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy and was two years younger to me. He had returned to Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy, his Alma Mater, to pursue his Post Graduation or Residency as we called it. He was not married at that point and stayed in a different hostel, hostel 1 which was two tram stops away from Hostel 4. where I lived.

Meanwhile I was steadily coming to get to know Mr. Pierre. In the evenings, we would chat a bit and I would try my elementary french on him. Learn some new word and brush up whatever I thought I knew. He was a Tupac fan and would boo some pretty interesting numbers in the evenings. Late afternoon, he would go to the University gym and execute his body building plan. One day he took me to the gym and introduced me to the instructor there. Well, I just chatted with him as he did all the lifting and I also learned about the rules of the gym. I heard from him that the university swimming pool is just on the other side of the wall and that it would be open during summer.

Mr. Pierre was a Roman Catholic. He had his own values. He was very particular about not paying money to pass the exams, even if the examiner would fail him. So he did fail a couple of tests because he refused to pay up but made it during the supplementals which followed immediately. He had an ukrainian girl friend and sometimes she would visit him. He wanted to be alone with her and we had understanding among ourselves and so whenever his guest would come, I would go for shopping and site seeing, so that he can entertain his guests and enjoy his time with them. One day after I returned from a walk in the nearby 'Schevchenko Park', as we had our evening chat, he advised me not to go to those areas alone. He had been to the park one day and some people came and attacked him and warned him to return to his country. He said that people have a xenophobic orientation and they hate black skinned people. After that experience, Mr.Pierre joined an Aikdo class and started learning self defense skills to gurad his life. That was quite a warning for a new comer who had no experience whatsoever with racism. 

Now it made sense to me as to a certain occurance which happened within a week of my arrival in Dnipropetrovsk. There is a small shop where I ususally had my food from during these early days, roasted Chicken and Pilav rice and one morning as I proceed to this shop, a white man was standing in the corner just opposite the side of the shop. As I about a 20 feet away from him, he started staring at me with an angry face as if he is going to attack me next. My naive mind could not make sense of this and I gave a smile and proceeded to the store. The 'cold stare' which he gave me did not disturb me, but I was certainly puzzled and was overcurious as to know what the matter was. Ofcourse, I never came to know what it was and so my hypotheses as to what it might me is based on Mr. Pierre's experience which had more direct communication. I now firmy beleive it was an act of brazen racism and xenophobia.