Proud Papa

I’ve been blessed with four wonderful children. My daughters, Beth and Robyn are currently in India. I received this email from Robyn and want to share it with my readers. It’s an upbeat message about the human family in a world torn with political  strife.

“Seeing the Taj Mahal was a very intense experience, in so many ways, and most of it probably won’t sink in for days. But at lunch afterwards Beth described one of the most meaningful aspects of the day when she said that she was as fascinated by the people from all over the world as she was of the Taj Mahal, if not more so.

I have traveled to over 15 countries in the past ten years from Paris to Shanghai, and have been to dozens of tourist sites, from the Eiffel Tower to the grave of Eva Peron, and I have never seen people from the variety of countries that I saw at the Taj Mahal. I knew that because of how people dressed, what kind of shoes they wore (or didn’t wear), how they walked, how they spoke, how they interacted with each other, how they cared for their babies, and how they were as fascinated with us as we were with them. Our first glimpse of this curiosity came at the Gandhi Memorial the day before when Beth offered to take a photo of a family and instead they wanted to take a picture with her because they had never seen people who looked like her. They spoke only a few words of English, we think they told us they were from Nepal.

Several times at the Taj Mahal people asked (through hand gestures of course) if they could take a picture of us and with us. How wonderful is it that people all over the world just want to know other people from all over the world? No matter our skin color, where we live, what religion we practice, what job we do, or what food we eat, we want to know something about each other. We only experienced smiles, shy glances, head nods, humility, curiosity, and genuine peace from the people we encountered. As I tell these stories, please keep in mind that very few people at the Taj Mahal actually had a camera. Many were fortunate to have shoes. I cannot imagine their journey to get there, how long they had to save money to pay for the trip, and how amazed they were at the world outside their own country or village.

Two little girls in the security line at the Taj Mahal gently tapped Beth on her back trying to get her attention, when Beth smiled at them they asked us to take a picture of them. We took the photo, showed it to them, and they giggled with pride at their photo. Beth then pulled up a picture on her iPhone of her own children and the girls giggled again.

Later an older man wearing a green turban asked if he could have a picture with (my husband) John.  His son snapped a picture, I snapped a picture, and the man beamed with pride.

Later, a group of older men saw me sneak a picture of them, they all smiled, stood upright, and gestured for me to take another picture.  Then their wives all wanted me to take a picture of them and they all laughed and bowed toward me as if to say “thank you.”

A large group of school aged boys started pointing at us. I asked if I could take their picture and they proudly posed with the hand gestures of rappers. Hilarious! Beth and I started laughing, which encouraged their behavior even more, and the other boys in the group begged us to take their picture, too.”

As you can readily see from my daughter’s account, hate isn’t born in the human heart. It must be taught. We can change that fact.

Robert DeFilippis