Conversations with Strange People

Reasoably attractive stranger to Rimi at Davis Square café: Uh, hi. Can I share this table with you? They [jabbing a finger towards the staff] say those tables are unavailable because they have to clean up a spill...
Rimi: please. Feel free.
Stranger: thanks!

After a while of general chitchat:

Stranger: so, I never actually introduced myself. Hi, I'm X (extends hand).
Rimi: hello. Rimi (shakes extended hand).
S: so... uh, are you British or just Indian?
R: just Indian, I am afraid.
S: 'cause you have this British accent. It's kinda cute.
R: I haven't really, but thank you.
S: (persistently) and you speak like English people too. All big words and "c-aa-nt", "d-aa-nce"...
R: (laughing politely) well, at least we have the specifics now.
S: sorry?
R: "English" as opposed to the wide-ranging "British"?
S: you mean, like... the Irish accent?
R: I mean all the different countries and regions and local influences. There is quite a variety, I understand. And mine, of course, isn't one of them.

Just then three people enter with "Conserve Energy" leaflets and ask the proprietor/accountant/supervisor if they can leave a bunch next to the door. There is five minutes of putting up a couple of them on the wall, a cheerful "All the best with the rest!", and then the group leaves.

S: what is America coming to, huh?
R: (taken aback) good things, I hope.
S: do ya? With all this bullshit?
R: (looking around) which?
S: all this environment crap. You can't leave your lights on, you shouldn't take long showers, you should drive cheap little cars that supposedly use less gas... I mean, do I pay my taxes to be told what to do by a president I didn't event elect?
R: well. There is the little problem of diminishing resources, and growing population, and environmental damage...
S: oh, oh! Come on!
R:...and our leaders are expected to solve those for the 'greater common good'... I'm sorry, you were saying?
S: I agree with you! I agree that our "leaders", however they may have sneaked into office, have to solve these problems. But is that going to happen by going fascist on their own countrymen? It's like having a live-in mom!
R (mildly): I am all right with that, really. In my country we're quite used to the idea of living with our parents. We fight, we make up, we rebel, we concede... it's a viable enough model. The analogy certainly has precedence in political thought.
S: well yeah. I went to grad school at Harvard to study politics, I know all about the body politic and whatever. But this is a free country! It's the twenty first century! The government can't tell us what to do!
R: (dryly) I think you'll find it can, X.
S: in America it shouldn't, that's the whole point on which America was founded, Rimi. We are not a communist dictatorship.
R: I... do you really think so? Because this America is a contemporary composite whole, you know? It's sort of not... not like India, for example, which has had a traditional system of integration and segregation between communities. America is sort of... homogenising, I think. And to keep that effect in place it has to concede ground... evolve, you know? If everybody is to be American first, then America cannot really -- I mean, this is what *I* think obviously, and I have no knowledge of the US constitution's history -- but I think even if the original framers of your constitution wanted minimum government interference, with...
S: because they were thoughtful people who were right.
R: very likely, but also because their approach to government was based on their own experiences with it. I mean, if you met an Indian girl when you were young, walking home from school, and she hit your and stole your lunch money and your watch and your new sneakers and hit you some more and ran away, I assume it would influence how you react to Indian girls for some time onwards. At least it would for most people, and that is an important thing to remember, don't you think? That was a stupid example and I'm not explaining this very well, but...
S: so... basically you're saying they were sorta right but also wrong?
R: (takes a deepish breath) I am saying that perhaps we should not simplify political ideologies too much, and that we should always take the original and subsequent evolving contexts into consideration.
S: well, I am not simplifying, and I am "taking context into consideration".
R : I'll have to take your word for it.
S: Oh? Well, let me tell you something, and I hope you don't mind. I think you're being a little snotty. I think you're trying to tell me I don't understand the politics of my own country!
R (thoughtfully): do you know, I rather think I am.