Books

Got on the train yesterday at 5:16pm. The rush hour had not yet flooded the trains with bodies, and one woman was all that there was in the ladies' first class car. She sat next to the window, feet up on the bench opposite her. I sat across from her, glanced at the sparkling bangles around her wrist, the colorful weave of her salwaar kameez, the bottoms of her bare feet next to me. As I opened my book to its mark, and prepared to dig into the story, I noticed that her head was also buried in a book - Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It jolted me slightly to see such a well-known book from the U.S. in the hands of a middle-aged Indian woman, whizzing through the city on the other side of the world. Culture really can travel far.