On my fourth day getting into an elevator to the sixth floor in the Whitefield, Bangalore, I was in the back and next o me stood several men and women heading also to their work. None had a uttered a word, and I am sure they are all nice people and they have friends and family members. For several seconds, I thought about breaking the silence, but I refrained.
    “Who am I to break their daily routine of silence in an elevator to work,” I thought.
    Then I changed my mind and said:” Good morning everyone.”
   They all answered, “good morning”, looked at me, and smiled. A girl on the left smiled and asked if I was from India, and I said, “I could be, but I am from Algeria.”
    “What is your good name,” she asked.
     I showed her my employer badge and pronounced my name.
    “We, in India, do not greet people we don’t know,” she explained.
    “You can change that and greet people whom you don’t know,” I said.
     I planned to add “that’s how you know more people and make new friends.” I did not have the time. The elevator door had opened. We were at the sixth floor, and I needed to get out.
    I hope to run into at least one of them at lunch today tomorrow when I come in and continue the discussion

Once upon a time a beautiful girl with long black hair did not have courage. Many things in life scared her; In fact everything scared her. Doubts and fear seemed to roam her world like wild horses roam open plains.  The dark scared her, walking in the street scared her, and riding a two-wheeler scared her too.
"How could I go on leaving like this?" she thought.

Then one day at home and, while on the phone with her mom, the lights went out because of a power outage and the small room she was in went dark. Her heart started to beat. Then her smart phone died, and her heart beat even faster. In the pitch dark room, she started to feel anxiety and she did not think she could survived being the in the dark for many minute. Death could come any minute. She did not want to scream and ask for help. That would be shameful to do so, Having no choice, she waited and waited, but nothing happened and she continued to wait.

When the light finally came back, she realized that she survived the dark and understood that she had to control her fear to live and that the only solution to her fear is courage and that the moments she spent in the dark alone proved she had courage, which she did not think she had.
    "I possess courage. I am courageous," she thought.
   "What if I get a tattoo of courage to protect my back so that I can move forward in life," she said to herself in her room.

The picture below shows the Korean sign for courage that she tattooed on her back. In her right hand next to her wrist rests a small tattoo of her heart to express the love of herself.
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As I waited in at the modal station in Normal for a bus that will take me to O'Hare International Airport on my second journey to India, I met Suma, a native of India. We started to talk when we both thought the Peoria Charter bus to Chicago had arrived. No, it did not. It was the Trailways bus to Denver. 
We returned inside the station and sat next to each other but on opposite benches. 
We had broken the ice and started to inquire about each other work and employer. (I will keep that private).  Still, Suma did not waste time and worked diligently. We were both in software development and we shared very short demonstrations of our projects to each other. 
 
Our impatience grew and the bus from Peoria had not arrived. Suma shared a picture of her son, and I showed how the picture could be cropped so that the focus becomes on her son instead of the door, the alarm o’clock on the cupboard.
 
She showed me a picture of her wearing a beautiful India saree. Next to her stood a man wearing an untucked shirt and a pair of jeans. What a contrast! I abhor the picture of a woman that spent time prettying herself and put colorful clothes and matching jewelry next to a man that really does not care how he appears. The worst is a man wearing a t-shirt on which I Love NY or something else is written and standing next to a beautifully dressed woman. I told Suma to demand that, from now on, her husband must to wear traditional Indian clothes or a suite and a tie. She laughed.

Why don’t many men care how they look in pictures with their beautifully dressed spouses? Pictures are better when all family members are neatly and nicely dressed and groomed.
 
At 10:35 AM and almost an hour late, the PCC bus finally arrived, and we got inside after the driver placed our suitcases in the luggage compartment. Once inside, I asked Suma to sit on a seat on the opposite side of mine, and she graciously accepted.
 
I learned that Suma first got a BS in Pharmacy but later switched to information systems in graduate school. That interest in medicine resulted in her cosmetic and hair stylist sideline jobs. She even worked in a beauty salon. She showed me two black, beautiful, and long hair styles she did. One was of her niece in India.
 
When our discussion turned to food, she said that she has brought Masala Puri with her to eat if she got hungry. I jokingly said that if she would have to share it with me.
“No, no,” you can have all of it,” she said.
“Maybe half,” I insisted.
She pushed her lunch on me and I started to feel bad for taking her food and worried she would get hungry later. I ate all of her delicious homemade Masali Puri, and I thought that I was going to India and my journey started with eating India food cooked by an Indian woman whom I did not know two hours earlier.