After last week’s coast to coast meetings, this week has been a repeat. Today was a very long day again. Those six hour long partnership negotiations don’t get any easier. And then I had to endure the two hour long Los Angeles infamous traffic on 101 and 405. Finally, when I sat down in the Delta Sky Club, I realized it was already 10 PM by my time and I was terribly hungry.

Came out of the Skyclub and sat at a bar in a nearby restaurant. After starting the evening with an Old Fashioned, I settled for chicken wings for dinner. The wings absolutely stayed true to their name – Five Flame. Just as I was gorging thru my dinner, a couple came up and attempted to settle down in the two chairs next to me.

I moved a little to make space for them. The guy looked at me and asked “Five Flames”? I can only imagine what he must have seen. I had shaved my head in the morning and on those days, having spicy wings undoubtedly meant that I was sweating bullets thru my pate. In any case, we got started talking…

“So, where are you headed to?”, I asked.
“Tahiti and Bora Bora. We are going on our honeymoon.”
“Congratulations. Where are you coming from?”
“Atlanta. She grew up in Atlanta. Her parents live there.”.

I looked at her and was incredulous. What is the chance that I would be sitting next to somebody from my town?

“Where in Atlanta?”, I asked.
“Alpharetta”.

Well, this was getting spooky.

“Where in Alpharetta”?
At this point, she had no idea who I was or where I was from. I am sure she thought I was weird (well, she was not the first one to think so), but she persisted – “Barnwell Road”.

“On the Old Alabama side or the Holcomb Bridge side?”. That pretty much did it. We had started laughing out hard by now.

It turns out, Maria moved to Atlanta before her high school and her parents still live there. And where they live is on my way from home to office everyday (when I am in Atlanta that is). Both she and her husband Ryan are in social media marketing. He grew up in the midwest and has lived in Indiana and Chicago. She spent some time in New York. We talked a lot about the Washington Square Park area where she used to live and as does Natasha now. In a total coincidence, Maria had targeted NYU and USC as her top two colleges. As did Natasha!!

Here is another coincidence… after their food came, the first thing Maria did was started picking up food from Ryan’a plate. That is exactly what Sharmila does (not from Ryan’s plate; I mean from my plate). I warned Ryan that twenty five years of marriage later, he should not expect anything different.

After having a lot of fun at the end of a rather stressful day, I had to say goodbye to the young just married couple. I did promise to check up on Maria’s octogenarian parents some time. Wait till they get the shock of their life – when a weird clean shaven Indian drops by for coffee!!

I want to see if her mom picks up food from her dad’s plate. Maybe I have some hope twenty five more years later that I can have my whole plate to myself!! 🙂

I had been waiting for this day for a few months. You never want to impose yourself on somebody who has been told that he has a few more days to live. But I was hoping that somehow he will figure out a way out of it and make time for me to meet him. Today was the day.

Over a cup of coffee, I caught up with Cuyler on the good fight he is fighting.

I got to know Cuyler about a year back and soon he joined our team at office. And then he relocated his family – wife and very young kids – to the West Coast to stay close to one part of our business there. After a run in the evening one day in June, he started getting into a lot of pain. A couple of days of medical tests later, he got the shocking news – he had a very advanced stage of liver cancer.

It was bad enough that he had to go for immediate chemotherapy. And that is where it got worse. The liver refused to respond to treatment. At that point, the doctors let him know that they had run out of all options.

They immediately moved back to their home town in Texas and soon he had to be admitted to a hospice. As he explained to me, at this point of time, he was in immense pain and just had no energy left. He had lost a lot of weight, his body looked like it was painted with a highlighter (jaundice from a non functioning liver) and his urine had the color of coffee (no filtering happening).

The pivotal moment was his so called “good bye lunch” when all his friends and family had gathered in the hospice. And he slowly waded thru them in his walker. As he recollected for me, it was as the guests were leaving, he was taken over by a compelling determination to fight back. “I am going to fight the good fight, no matter what”, as he put it.

Next day, he got up and refused to take the walker. Just walked a few steps and came back. And that was the start of things starting to look better. A lot of different advise from different doctors, trying out alternate medicine, different food regimen (he talked a lot about alkaline water) and every single day, he felt he was getting a little better.

A visit to the doctor showed that the liver had shown some sign of life. He believes that the chemo had a delayed reaction and did manage to kill a few bad cells. Or perhaps, it is one of those cases where your mind can prevail over the body. As he said, at that point of time, he was running on sheer will to live and determination to fight.

Over the next couple of months, he kept at it. The doctors were willing to give chemo another shot. Chemotherapy, as many of you know, is really putting controlled poison in your system. It tries to kill the bad cells but it also kills good cells. Your body and the different systems take an immense beating. But he said that after the first few days of being completely beat, one fine day, he thought he was feeling much better. In fact the best in a long time. Checks showed that the procedure did yield some results.

He is nowhere close to be outside the danger zone yet. Has gone thru four rounds already and has beat most of the tumors back to less than half their original sizes. He probably has another four rounds to go before any serious long term solution (e.g. surgery, transplant) can be contemplated.

It was pretty funny how he explained his chemo. He will go for a treatment on a Monday, on Tuesday he will be fine, Wednesday he will start feeling terrible (I guess the good cells and the bad cells are getting killed) and then be wiped out and sleep from Thursday to Sunday. Next week he will feel bad but then he will have a week when he feels much better. And then he will have to go in for another treatment.

This is one of those good weeks. He brought his family to Atlanta to visit their old friends. I was glad he could make time early in the morning to have a coffee with me before any of the families woke up. You know what else he does on those good weeks? He attends our office meetings (video) and starts working on office stuff. Every time I see an email from him or his face pops up on the video calls, I shake my head in disbelief and tell him “You are crazy”.

Talking to him today, I recognized that when doctors tell you that you are going to die in a few days and you tell them “No, I am not”, there is a level of craziness that is absolutely called for. Thank you for fighting the good fight, Cuyler Duncan.

As we got up and hugged each other before we left, between his words of heart felt gratitude for all the personal and professional support he has received from us and my sense of awe and inspiration from his life story, I am not sure who was fighting harder to hold back the tears.

That too, was a good fight, this morning.

Any one of you has ever gone out for a drink or dinner with me knows one standard routine of mine. Any time the person at the bar or the restaurant helping us asks “What else can I get for you?”, my immediate response is “A million dollars would help”.

In the minimum, it creates some laughter or at least a light hearted banter to break the ice. The best response till the other day was when the young lady serving us lunch at a place near Perimeter Mall stopped in her tracks, looked at me and said “Okay. But it will cost you two”. I was floored by her presence of mind. Not to speak of her negotiating skills 🙂

I said “till the other day”. Well, the other day, I finally met my match in Olivia. She is the Assistant Manager at Milton’s Cuisines – which is Sharmila’s and my Sunday night dig. She must have observed me before every weekend. Because that day when she asked me the same question and I gave the same knee jerk reaction – she promptly fished out a faux million dollar bill!!

Game, set and match!!

We laughed a lot and got her to take a picture with me and the bill. Now that I have met my match, I am in the market for some more interesting responses to “What else can I get for you?”. Any suggestions?

Early morning flight to New York, day long meetings, early dinner with Natasha and then I was tired enough to want to go to bed to get up early for another early morning flight the next day. And the hotel was still about 45 minutes away. But there was one more important thing to complete before I hit the sack.

There was this guy who I wanted to see. He was my classmate in second grade – that goes back all the way to 1974. After a search for over three decades, I had finally located him in New York a month back. (Imagine that – looking up all over the world to only find that he lives this close to you).

He had some office meetings starting at 9PM (with HongKong). Which meant, I would have about half an hour with him. Decided the give it a shot. Called him, took a Uber and waited near his apartment complex. It was already 8PM.

In a few minutes, among the crowd emerging, I thought I could recognize a guy. Two more steps and I knew it was the same guy from second grade! The face has only changed a little and I would have been able to pick him up from a crowd.

“Pulak Fool-ees-stop Sinha”?

He gave out a loud laughter in response. We hugged each other and went to the bar next door.

“Do you remember the incident of “fool-ees-stop”?”, I asked.

“Yes. I do. I can’t believe you remember it!”

You see we had a very strict second grade class teacher (home room teacher in this country’s lingo) – Mrs. Shastri. We were all pretty scared of her – except one guy called Mukundan – who I have not been able to locate yet. In any case, Mrs. Shastri would make us stand up and read out passages – to help us with our pronunciation. (Someday, we will talk about an Indian correcting another Indian’s pronunciation accent – but that is a joke for another day).

It was Pulak’s turn. He smartly got up and started to read out a passage. In those days, we used to read out the punctuation marks too. Not sure why. For example, the previous statement would be read as “Not sure why Period”. Or rather “Not sure why Full Stop” in India.

Not sure what happened to Pulak – or was it his natural drawl that time, he landed up reading the first sentence and instead of “Full Stop”, he said “fool-ees-stop”. The rather dour Mrs. Shastri immediately barked back – “What do you mean fool-ees-stop”? That made all of us giggle. In spite of the gravity of the moment, Pulak gave out a little giggle too. And that just further infuriated Mrs. Shastri!!

We had a great laugh about that incident last night. I was thrilled to bits to have been able to see him after so many years of search. We caught up with our last few decades, our families, our parents and our old school batch mates.

Out of respect for his time, I brought the meeting to a close at sharp 8:30 and promised to come by and see him again.

Here is one relationship, I am glad to note, that has not met its “fool-ees-stop”, yet!!

Dinner with Natasha done, I walked her to her dorm.

“Do you want to come up to my room”?, she asked.

I was, of course, going to accept any time she might have for me. So, I said – “Sure”.

She explained to me the process. Once we get to her dorm, apparently, I would face a strict security person who would check and keep my id. She warned me not to talk too much and just answer the questions I was going to be asked succinctly.

Not particularly difficult rules, I thought. I went with the game. But you know, by now, what kind of a rule follower I am. I had about a couple of seconds as Tasha fumbled for her id in her bag. I glanced at the security person’s name plate and my first words to him were “Bangaali naaki?” (Are you a Bengali?).

You can only imagine the dismay on Natasha’s face. None of my daughters like it when I talk to strangers. And talking to the security person at her own dorm? That could only spell trouble.

By now, I was on a roll. Got to know Mr. Majumder and his background in two sessions – a few minutes then and a lot more time before I left the dorm. Got to know about Mr. Majumder and his family. He is from Bangladesh who moved to NY some time back. Has three kids and he has worked hard to put them thru college (his youngest kid is in NYU). His focus on kids’ education reminded of my dad all the time.

After having a really great time getting to know him, I finally had to say Bye. Before I said bye, he gave me his number and asked me to call me if he can be helpful ever.

Once a dad, always a dad!!! He realized that I might get worried about my daughter and that he might be helpful.

That was a very nice gentleman I had the fortune of meeting today.

Funny part, Natasha stood next to me thru the entire conversation listening to us. And apparently, rather impressed too. When I talked to her later, she told me that her roommate wanted to make sure that Mr. Majumder realized that she is Natasha’s roommate. Apparently, it is a good thing to be on the positive books of the security person!!!

The author of the book presented a copy of the book to me herself this morning. The story was, of course, hers. Each page illustration was also by her. (available in Amazon in paperback and Kindle). Here is the twist… the author is Trisha Rao – a 9 year old kid (she authored the book when she was 8 year old) from India. She is the daughter to two of my dearest friends and old colleagues – Rajesh and Sumana.
I knew the day was going to be great when Sumana had written to me from India that they were going to be in Atlanta for a couple of days and she would like to meet up and put in a run with me. You see, Rajesh and Sumana were my colleagues from the first start up company I had worked in. That goes back way too many years. Our professional paths separated but we have kept up the personal relationships. In fact, Sharmila and I visited their house in San Diego twelve years back and I had a breakfast with Rajesh around 2010 during one of those business trips. Then they moved to India.
Early in the morning, Sumana and I hit the road for a few miles. I have always admired her for how she grew from the back office side of the business to the sales side. Those are journeys that many have fallen on the wayside of. Caught up during the run with her family in India, the transition to India and so many other details about her that I always wanted to know,
And after the run, came the breakfast. That is when I met Trisha for the first time in my life and Rajesh after about six years. What was most inspiring was hearing Rajesh’s life journey – his physically challenged dad and his sister who I can relate to a lot more now since my mom is in a similar state. And how they all moved back to India to take care of their parents and family. And like everybody, they are getting to a point where they have to balance out the previous generation with the next generation. They probably will have to move back to US soon to ensure Trisha gets a great education. We had a great time exchanging notes on his sabbatical and the ones that I had had. To cap it off, Rajesh has taken to running too!
If there was a breakfast that I never wanted to end, it had to be this one. To quote Sumana – “Our passion for running is exceeded only by our zest for life”!!

This week, as you saw from my previous posts, I was in Sheboygan for a few days for our partners’ meet. On Monday evening – the night before the event was to start – I found myself with Julio thinking about what to do about dinner. The resort we were in was beautiful but eating there meant I was going to be interrupted all the time by the guests. Speaking of going out, this was Sheboygan we were talking about. Not too many choices.

Suddenly, I remembered about Blind Horse. Remember Yui – the girl who threw a dart in Japan and landed up in Kenosha? (Search for “Kenosha” in www.rajibroy.com). Well, I knew she did not work there any more but it was nevertheless a great place to eat. So Julio and I went for a fifteen minute drive to get to that place.

We were the only guests there. This was pretty late and of course, this was Sheboygan we were talking about. We sat at the bar to have dinner. I started telling Julio the story of Yui when our bartender overheard me and let us know that she had met Yui once when she joined the place.

After some chit chat between Julio and myself, I figured it would be good to know the new person too.

“What is your name?”
“Paula.”
One of the common ways for me to start a conversation for me is to find out where the person is from.
“That dark hair, you have… you are not from this part of the country are you? What is your lineage?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
For a moment I was wondering if she was trying to brush off an unwelcome intruder in her private life? No. She stood there smiling at us waiting for the next question!! (Actually, she is one of the most cheerful persons I have ever seen. Very witty, very smart and always smiling).

But it turns out Paula has very little idea about her biological parents. She was found in Milwaukee as a baby and then eventually adopted by a couple in Wisconsin. As you probably know by now, I think the world of parents that adopt.

“Tell me about your adoptive parents”.
I found out that they are as wonderful as I was thinking they would be. After adopting Paula, they adopted another child – her brother who is three years younger to her. He, as it turns out, is married to a lady who herself is adopted!! You want to guess from which country? India!!!

By now, Julio was into the conversation as much as I was. We were really intrigued by her life story. She has a daughter of 9 years. And she is a single mom.

That has to be a lot of hard work, I figured.
“How many jobs do you have?”
“Two”.

“Okay. Tell me what do you want to be when you grow up?”
She laughed at the concept that she has not grown up yet. But I was inspired by her answer. She wanted to go back to college and finish it. Apparently, she worked to earn thru her high school, went to college but dropped out after one year. Now she is waiting for her daughter to grow up a little and then she wants to go back to college.

“When you have a lot of money, what would you do with it?”, I asked her.
“Visit places.”
And it is then that she told us something – she has never been on a plane!! Of course, she is telling this to somebody who is on a plane literally every other day and is in a company that owns and flies planes!!!

Once again, I realized how lucky in life I have been.

But you always want the other person to have lots of luck too. So, here it is to you – Paula – go back to that college, get a degree and hopefully someday you will fly planes and see places that you have always wanted to see.

What do you know? Maybe Julio and I will hitch a hike in your plane!!!

For the rest of you, if you are in Wisconsin anytime and is in the mood for a mean Sazerac or a Manhattan, look up Paula Habeck at the Blind Horse.

The flight from Chicago was to leave at 6:45 pm. I had thirty minutes at hand and I was casually strolling along the sprawling airport just observing people. It was not normal for me to be on the road on a Friday evening and I had switched myself off from work. I had only a backpack with me and I was planning the reach the gate around 6:30 and be one of the last persons to get in.

As I casually shuffled towards my gate, suddenly a gentleman asked me “Are you from Illinois?”. I looked towards him and realized he was one of those folks that you will find at an airport often selling from a kiosk. In Atlanta, I have seen a few of them trying to sell Delta Amex cards. I assumed he was selling American Airlines credit cards. Usually, I would give a polite “Sorry, but I have enough cards” and move on. This time, I stopped and told him “No”. He asked me where I lived and I said Atlanta.

“You are the only person today who is not running to their flight. Everybody is in a hurry to get to their flight on a Friday evening”, he said.

“Yeah, I have a few minutes at hand. Anyways, there is going to be a crowd at the gate”, I said.

We said Bye to each other and I started walking to the gate again.

It was at that point I started getting some pangs of regret. He was a very nice guy, Why did he talk to me? He did not try selling anything to me. What was he selling anyways? I had a lot of questions. Halfway to the gate, I looked back and then looked at the watch. I had no chance of going back and talking to him again.

I guess Lady Luck was with me today. Upon reaching my gate, I noticed that my flight was delayed to 7:02. Seventeen extra minutes. I figured that was a sign. I walked back to the gentleman and his kiosk. He was busy doing something in his kiosk when I walked up to him and said “My flight is delayed. Would you have some time to spare for me?”.

And that is how we struck up a friendship. Found out that Doug is from Chicago and has spent all his life in a southern suburb of Chicago. He is between jobs and is doing this to bridge him through. Before this, he was in graphics printing. Very soft spoken, he came across as a very nice person.

I also realized that he was not selling credit cards. He was actually trying to convert customers to move to NRG – an energy company. I did the math quickly. Once he realized I was from Atlanta, I was not a potential customer for him. (NRG is not there in Atlanta). So, he had remarked about my apparent lack of hurriedness instead of trying to sell me NRG.

I was intrigued how effective was that method of selling that product.

“So, how many customers do you get in a day?”.

“Ten on a good day, two to three on a bad day”. That surprised me quite a bit.

It was at that point we talked about his previous job and how this is a temporary thing for him till he lands on his feet firmly again.

“Why did you come back to talk to me?”, he suddenly asked.

“Oh! I like making new friends. And I thought you were nice to me and I did not get to know you that time”.

“You are a very nice person too. I can see you are not from Chicago”

“Why?”, I asked half amused.

“Chicago people are very rude.”, he said, somewhat surprising me.

“No.”

“Yes, they are rude”.

And then he went on to explain the worst part of his job. “I hate the way people treat my like ####. You will be amazed how people will show me the hand and walk away. I know they are in a hurry. But why treat me like I am below them? I am just trying to do my job”.

I was not sure what to say. “I am sorry to hear that”, is all I could come up with. And a couple of exchanges later, I told him I had better gotten back to my plane. And managed to get a passerby to take a picture of us.

“I hope to meet you down the road again”, I said, as I waved him good bye for the second time.

As I slowly started my walk back to the gate, my mind flashed back to the numerous times I would be irritated by the sight of those credit card hawking folks at Atlanta airport and do everything to avoid eye contact. Even pretend to be on a call.

“I am just trying to do my job”…. those words of Doug kept coming back to haunt me. I realized that out of my fear of having to deal with an uncomfortable situation, how I have fallen terribly short in acknowledging another person as a human being just trying to earn a livelihood. Repeatedly so. How would I have felt if I was in their shoes?

In almost any encounters with a human being – any human being, we are not required to show grace and class. And that is the one good reason why I should be showing both. Every single time.

With very mixed feelings of regret in my own behavior but elated that I now have one more nice friend in my life, I finally walked into the plane. With the hope that I will be a better person next time when I see them.

And if any of you had nothing better to do than make  a new friend in Chicago O’Hare airport, swing by near Gate K7 or so and say Hi (and one from me too) to this gentleman in the picture. As he will tell you, his name is Douglas Smith.

Over the weekend, when we went to drop Natasha at NYU, I made some interesting friends – but then again, don’t I always? 🙂 One of our friends – Ishita – had opened up their apartment which is bang opposite the NYSE for us while they were in India. That was an incredible help – if not for anything else – just the logistics of storing stuff, getting stuff delivered and all that before we moved her in.

The first morning, I was up before everybody and decided to go out for a Starbucks. (I know, I am such a creature of habit !!). As I stepped out of the building, the building security guy opened the door for me. I just stopped there and made some polite chit chat and then told him that I am really not awake before I have my coffee – so I was going to get some coffee and then come back and talk to him.

I got my coffee and for good measure got him one too and started chatting with him. Was pretty fascinated by the whole conversation. My usual “So, where are you from?”, met with with an unexpected “Burkina Faso” reply. I had to stop for a second to get my geography right. That was the first time I had met anybody from Burkina Faso in my entire life!! My mind raced to remember what it was called before. After a few seconds, I told him – “You know, our geography teacher taught us about your country – but we remember your country as Upper Volta”. I distinctly remembered Mrs. Bhowmic teaching us about Ghana and its cocoa production and one of the neighboring countries called Upper Volta. I had asked her about Lower Volta and she had told me that there was no such country. That day, I had determined that Africa was a very confused continent. Albeit with some majestic elephants and lions 🙂 I was probably in eighth grade.

I found out that Brian Coulibaly (the young security guy we are talking about) had his entire family back in Burkina Faso and has been in America for a few years. He loves New York and will not move to any other place. An interesting side story to coffee – he told me coffee is good for me. He has been drinking since he was in single digits in age. Apparently, in western Africa, people start drinking coffee very early and is the equivalent of drinking tea in India or the Middle East. (Basically, you drink it many times but in much smaller amounts than we are used to in America).

He talked about their capital – Ouagadougou and their political system (apparently very corrupt with frequent coups and upheavals) and general economy (very poor country). I asked him about their President. He tried very hard but struggled to remember his name. We moved on to other topics about the country.

After spending a good 20 minutes I came back to our apartment. Later in the day, when we headed to NYU, he was gone.

The next morning though, as Niki and I stepped out to get some coffee (we were all up early – it was the move in day!!), he again opened the door for me and gave me the President’s name!! Apparently, he had to call up his mom that day to remind him of the name. I was suitably impressed. We got Nikita to take a picture of us.

I wish Natasha was there with me for her to realize – as great a day as it was going to be for her – how blessed she and we are in this country!!

P.S. I later Googled his country and found out an interesting factoid – a woman in his country bears 6 kids on an average!!!