One of my closest (if not the closest) friends here at the Dame is my roommate Bharti. I was very worried coming into graduate housing: given my horrible roommate experience my freshman year of college, three random roommates seemed like a gamble I was doomed to lose. But thank God it did not work out that way. Instead, I have three roommates who I love, and we all get along wonderfully. Bharti is one of these roommates.
Besides being close as friends, Bharti and I relate extremely well. It's almost uncanny how much we think alike and how similar our lives and interests are. We have had similar experiences, similar struggles, similar EVERYTHING it seems. I can't even begin to ennumerate the hundreds of similarities between us. We both love to dance and we both love to cook. We relate to our families in simliar ways. We have the same views on guys most of the time. We look for the same things in friends. We get excited about the same things and hurt by the same things. She has a group of friends in India just like my group of girls from Brown. The list goes on and on. We've known each other for only a few months, but we relate so well it's strangely like we've known each other for a very long time. Every day we are chatting and find new ways we think alike.
This is all fine, but what makes it most uncanny is how very different are lives are. Bharti is from Bombay, India. She just came to the United States 15 months ago for her program here at Notre Dame. I'm an American from Berwyn, Pennsylvania. She worked in business, and now is doing her MBA. I'm in sociology and would never want to set foot in corporate America. She's 27. I'm 22. She lived with her parents until she moved here last year (at age 26). I haven't lived at home since I left for college when I was 17. She's a not-very-religious Hindu. I'm a decently religious Christian. She's a youngest child. I'm an oldest child. In terms of upbringing and background, we are (quite literally) from opposite ends of the planet.
Circumstances say we shouldn't relate as well as we do. But I think I am more similar to Bharti than almost anyone I've ever met. So, how do two people from opposite sides of the world, from such different backgrounds end up so similar?
1 comment:
some would say that God only made a handful of personalities and then began to recycle them...thus you are the white, PA version of Bharti. I would disagree and say that God meant you for one another. Clara and I have so little in common. She hates the movies I love, I hate a lot of her emo music, we don't even like the same people (like you know who: Arch-nemesis), yet we adore one another. Who can say. Don't question it, enjoy it!
Love ya!
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