Do you know Mr Arora: Looking for love in Donald Trump's America
The present climate in America is not a pleasant one. Especially if you have a funny sounding name (to them), or don’t look white enough. Hate crimes against immigrants are on a rise and President Donald Trump is only adding fuel to the fire.
But while there is hate, there is also love. And that’s what we need to look for. Acceptance, and love and memories of what once was, is perhaps a potent force against the tidal wave of intolerance. Sometimes through anecdotes, and sometimes through tear-jerking stories, we are always reminded of the infinite power of the human heart to love.
Arun Venugopal’s short story on Facebook is something similar. It's a story about a woman's search for a certain Mr Arora, decades after they had been separated.
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| Photo: Reddit |
A white woman in her seventies wheeled a stroller with her grandchild into my subway car and sat down next to me. She had a question about where to transfer to the 6 train, so I told her.
HER: (in accented English) Where are you from?
ME: (slightly rolling eyes but playing along, as I always do) My family's from India.
HER: Do you know (hard to understand first name) Arora?
ME: What was his name again?
HER: (repeats it)
ME: Sorry, I don't. There are a lot of us, you know.
She explained that she had met Mr. Arora many years ago. This was in the 1960s. They had fallen in love. But it wasn't to be.
HER: I was too young!
She said this with great anguish, and to my surprise began to cry. She'd been in her early twenties at the time, and took her broken heart back to her homeland of Spain, where she soon lost touch with Mr Arora. At some point, she returned to America.
HER: So every time I meet someone who's Indian, I ask them if they know him.
ME: You still love him?
HER: (nodding) Yes... but I was too young!
And with that she began to cry again. Then her stop came and she wished me a wonderful afternoon, and wheeled her stroller off. Imagine, fifty years of searching for the one that got away.