pass the roti on the left hand side

I. A few years ago, I was walking down the street near the East Village with some colleagues from various organizations when a woman came up to us and stopped us.  "Have you heard about Gujara?" she asked me.  She did this without saying hello, introducing herself, or saying her name--which all makes sense, because she was, in fact, a total stranger.  She just happened to want to talk to me about the emotionally loaded topic of the Hindutva pogroms in Gujarat without knowing me, where I come from, or what my views might be.