Have you ever met a younger or an older version of you? Not somebody who is your sibling? Or doooooor ka cousin? but somebody totally stranger and then, within seconds you know, that it’s you? No? Yes? Well, I think I met me sometime ago – here in Sydney – and we were ten years apart – she was wiser of course.

I just want to share what we talked about – how brief our encounter was and a little background as to why we met. And I need to put a small note here that I have never had any such strong feeling ever – of meeting me. So yeah, she will always be in my thoughts!

I met her through Facebook Marketplace. We had recently moved to Australia and needed some stuff. I liked few pictures that she had posted. And then I went to see what she was offering.

She was wearing a black tank top and blue shorts. Her hair were short and roughly tied. She looked like a local (but she wasn’t). Back then, all white people were “goras” to me and looked the same.

Btw, I fail big time differentiating between Chinese, Japanese and Philippines. I’m successful in pointing out Arabs from the “Goras” now but I’m still clueless how European can be identified from Americans or Australians. All blacks are from South Africa (in my humble opinion) and all Bangladeshis are Indians. This world is all the same in my mind. Please don’t consider this paragraph racist. I’m just trying to tell – that I cannot differentiate although it doesn’t make any difference in anyone’s life – not even mine but sometimes – it is good to open up.

Khair, back to that one person this post is dedicated to. She showed us one piece and later asked us if we would be interested in the entire house as she was moving out. We took a tour and decided to buy everything she was offering. It was a nice, clean and very cheap deal altogether.

There were a total of four meetings or so that made me write my conclusion. She was me. She was a Bosnian Muslim. Had seen a war and got separated from her parents at a very young age. It took her a year to reunite with them. She worked hard in life and met her life partner over the internet in her mid-thirties. They were in a long-distance relationship for a year before they decided to meet. On their first meet-up, she was proposed. They were in nikah (Muslims’ registered marriage) for a year before they got together. On the surface of it, this life is not even remotely close to mine. So please don’t infer any similarity. I liked her mood and general attitude towards life.

May be she was polite because she was in a farewell mode. And when you eventually decide to move on, you become happy and contented with what is left of the world around you. You are nicer to the people who you talk to. I do the same. I guess you do the same to. In our real life, we only get a chance to “move on” when we are leaving our workplace. Otherwise, you don’t get to say good bye to your parents or siblings or your own family every now and then.

Anyway, I don’t know why we had a discussion on Sydney and Islam and raising kids when I was only there to collect her fridge and tv. lol. But we did.

I didn’t understand her back then when she said that social media sucks all your time so she wasn’t anywhere. She said she wanted to live and not exhibit. She said that with time, she had realized that living successful but alone is no fun – relationships are important. So she was moving to her loved ones. She mentioned how she met her husband. It was everything but regular.

I may not be able to do justice to the claim I have just made. But for me, it will always remain evident that there is at least one soul in this world, whose brain functions just like mine. This is a mind-boggling revelation. She told me how life unfolded in front of her and what decisions she took. And every time, my heart said that “I would have done the same”. So much so, that at the end of our last meeting – when I sheepishly asked her if she could be contacted in the future, she warmly said that it might not be possible as she has no footprints on social media and her phone number will be changed in the new country. Even then my heart whispered that “I would do the same”….

Sigh!

Until then, take care.