The first stop on my road trip extraordinaire was Pasadena, California, to visit one of my oldest friends and her family. Normally I would have stayed in her house had she not recently lost her mother to cancer and after being away from her own family for months caring for her mother. I didn’t want to add another person she needed to “care for,” so I rented an AirBnB nearby.

Whenever I go onto AirBnB I try to find one that either has character (ie: old) or is in an historic neighborhood. I found a great studio to rent in the top floor of an historic Greene & Greene house. I jumped at the word “historic,” and my brother-in-law Jason jumped at the words “Greene & Greene.” Apparently these brothers designed some amazing houses back in the early 1900s and as a devoted woodworker by hobby, Jason might have even had a little drool forming in the corner of his mouth.

Meena was the most gracious of hosts; she gave me a complete tour when I got there and pointed out every convenience and amenity stocked in the room (and there were a lot, from every kind of sundry to Campbell’s soup and fruit cups). When I came home late one night, she had even wrapped up a fresh breakfast pastry and left it on the stairs leading to my room. On my last morning there I asked her if she would like to have coffee together so she could tell me about her historic house (and so I could report back to Jason) She invited me to come down and sit together in her front room.

Meena is a very intelligent and stylish Indian woman in her mid-60s with a matter-of-fact demeanor and a quiet kindness. She is also a princess. No, really, she is a bona fide princess. Her grandfather was the last king of India before the country gained its independence. Her whole family ruled all over the nation, governors of provinces and mayors, etc, and she was raised in opulent wealth and private schools. But when Meena was 15 years old, and with only $7.50 in her pocket, she fled the country.

Her father had long arranged a marriage for her that would provide a lucrative alliance. But despite her many protests, the law stated daughters were essentially chattel “owned” by their fathers. Every day for a year Meena would take whatever pocket change she had been given and exchange it into dollars in order to buy herself a plane ticket. She forged her mother’s signature to get a passport, a fact over which she still seemed to harbor a shred of guilt as she said that unfortunately she had to resort to “criminal” actions.  Having acquired her ticket, she left a note for her parents that simply read, “I have gone. Don’t look for me,” and boarded a plane to Zurich.

She survived scraping by and on the few dollars the only family member she confided in would send her. She also had to stay hidden as her family immediately dispatched men to find her and bring her back (remember the whole chattel thing?). She was able to evade discovery and eventually work her way to England. There, she attended university, became an economist, worked for the World Bank, and lived all over the globe.

Eventually she returned to England and worked for the London Underground where she met Bryan, an Englishman and her husband now of nearly 30 years. Since getting married, she and Bryan have been rejected by family and often alienated at corporate and societal events because, as she explains, “Bryan is a tall white man and I am a small brown woman.”  But the two have survived the bumps and scrapes together. She told me relationships are first about lust, then love, then companionship, and then longevity. But people, she went on, don’t see marriage as an investment – between equal shareholders – and that the markets will go up and down. Meena repeated the adage that a happy marriage should feel like “hand in glove,” but she prefers the metaphor of very comfortable smoking slippers.

Before I had to go, she showed me her front yard garden. Because of the water shortage, Meena had replaced the plants a few years back not only with drought-friendly plants but also with wild fruit and berry bushes. She said when drought comes, the plants die and the small animals have nothing to eat. She figures she’ll let the trees feed the birds and squirrels, but her berry bushes will feed the rest of the critters. It’s not about animal activism, she explained; it’s just about taking care of the ecosystem around her. Trust me, any guest of Meena’s is part that ecosystem.

I could never have guessed that my AirBnB host was a princess, a refugee, an economist, a wife, and now she had become a friend. My morning with Meena reminded me of what Alex Haley, author of the classic book, Roots, said, “Every time an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.” What he meant was the stories that make up the life of just one person could fill a library full of books. I suppose that is one of the reasons why I love to hear and tell stories so much. If we don’t get to know people around us, sit and listen to their stories, their books will be lost forever.