One of the greatest benefits of living a life on the road is the opportunity I get to make so many new friends from all walks of life. Getting to hear those individual stories of people I meet on the road makes me appreciate everything around me so much more. It definitely makes those getting up at unGodly hours, irritating delays in flight, skipping dinner because I was too late to check in .. far more bearable. In reality, I look forward to them. I write them down and in then moments of personal crises I read them up to get little pick me ups.

Today’s story is about a really old lady – you can see her in the picture. And by “old” I mean the completely archaic way of counting the integral number of times the earth has gone around the sun after you were born. Outside of that sidereal definition, this was one of the youngest and most beautiful lady I have met yet.

Like it often happens, I found myself rushing out of the airport (this time it was Dulles) and scrambling to the Avis bus. It was less an impending office meeting and more of the old windy weather outside that made me walk as fast as I could. Once inside the bus, I was lost in my emails on my iPhone when I realized that the bus had started moving.

I looked up and realized that I was the only passenger. The driver – the old lady in question – noticed that I had taken my nose off my phone and asked if I had a reservation. The formalities done, I figured why not just make friends with her? So, I walked up to the front of the bus and started talking to her. I asked her how long she had been with Avis and then one thing led to the other.

Turns out, Janice has been driving with Avis for the last 5 years. She was proud to point out that she was the only female Avis driver in the Avis fleet in IAD and the oldest one by age! I was curious what got her to driving rental car buses five years back. I am glad I was curious – because I learnt the personal story of this fascinating lady.

Me: “You have been driving with Avis for 5 years. How did you get started with this?”
She: “I had not too many options”.
Expecting to hear a story of an old lady fighting her thru financial difficulties, I asked her “Tell me a little more. What were you doing before this?”
She: “Driving eighteen wheelers across the country”.
I recoiled like I got hit with something I had no idea would hit me. Actually, I did get hit with something I had no idea would hit me.
Me: “What do you mean you drove eighteen wheelers across the country?”

Turns out her first love as a child was always about driving big trucks. She did live to fulfill her dreams. And she has driven eighteen wheelers for nearly three decades!!! She has seen the country inside out and loved every moment of it.

And then one fine day, while trying to clean the front of her truck, she slipped and broke her leg. This was in Indiana. Apparently, that was the only time she had to ask for help from anybody. And that was her own son!!! Who apparently is always worried sick what might happen to his mom on the road.

She took six months off to recuperate and got herself the Avis job.
“What is the plan ahead?”, I asked, wondering how she will start tapering down.
“Oh! Once I am fully healed, I go back to driving eighteen wheelers”.

I was absolutely stunned!!

Here I am – worried about all the stuff I cannot control and there she was – determined to live life on her own terms. Here I am – chasing the ever elusive “financial security” line – and there she was – soaking up every moment on either side of every state line.

Since I was the only passenger, she drew the bus up all the way to B23 – where my rental car was parked. Before getting down, I asked her if it was okay for me to take a picture with me. She readily agreed. There being no one else, I had to make a vague attempt at a selfie.

Then I asked her “Would you mind sharing your email so I can share when I write about your life story?”.
She: “I do not do emails”.
Me: “You do not do emails? Facebook? Twitter?”
She: “I do not do computers”.
Me: “I have to ask you this – Why???”
She: “I told you already – I dreamt of driving eighteen wheelers. I never dreamt of computers.”

As I sat in the rental car, before even I could push that “Start” button, I had to take a few moments to gather myself.

“Wow”, I said to myself, “… to have lived the simple dreams of my childhood and not getting distracted by everything else…. “

It was June of 1975. We had just returned to our third grade after a five week summer vacation (those days, in India, for us, summer vacation was typically from early May to mid June). All of us came back except this really thin Punjabi girl with her signature two long hair plaits. (the Bengali word was “binuni”). Her name was Preeti Saini.

None of us knew what happened to her. To make matters worse, our teacher – Mrs. Bose was hospitalized with something. We had a substitute teacher who was equally in the dark. Over time, we all got busy with our studies and games on the field and forgot her.

And for years, it has bugged me no end to find out whatever happened to her. I am one of those guys that can never sleep well knowing that somebody who crossed my path in this life has gone completely dark on me. Years and years of search later, in a completely fortuitous way – and I mean this is serendipity heaped upon serendipity – I got to know that she lives not too far from where we are! You can read the details in this amazing story in http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=9648

Last week, my work took me to Minneapolis. A couple of calls before that and there I was with my friend who never showed up one fine day back in 1975. Fortunately, she showed up as scheduled forty one years later!!! Amazingly, she looked the same as I remembered her face from the first grade. (See the picture. The insets are from a picture in our first grade)

We had a great time catching up on our past, siblings, aging parents and the adoption of a new country as our own many many moons back…

Okay, he is a handsome looking, younger, Caucasian guy with a lot of hair on his head. And I am anything but! However, it is another of those great “intersections points” I had on the road.

This one does not involve any airport or distant places. It was in fact in Norcross (a suburb of Atlanta) where our office is located. A few days back, sometime late in the evening, I realized that I was the last person left in the office. I still had a few emails and documents to go thru. I packed up, locked the office and went to a favorite bar of mine near the office. It is actually a very old railway station converted to a bar and restaurant. (called The Crossing). Early in the week, usually the bar is not that crowded and it allows me to do all this email and document stuff I keep for the end of the day. The best part is the train going by every fifteen minutes or so (mostly freight trains and a few Amtrak trains) and rattling the whole place. Still get fascinated watching a train go by so near and close.

In any case, on this day, at some point I started to wind up all the office work and settled down on my second and last drink. I am not sure how it happened – I think I was talking to the barlady Nicole about Powerball – but I somehow managed to talk to a couple – who had come and settled down not too far from me sometime during the evening. At the end of half an hour of talking, I came away convinced that he is my (better) twin!!

Tim and Nanette were their names. Tim mentioned about being in a “gap year” (retiring for some time before going back to a new job). That was all the lead I needed. I am a big believer of that. I excitedly told him about all my “time off” years. We talked about the philosophy of breaking up retirement from “once and done” to multiple periods of retirements so as to enjoy life in the different decades we live thru. We also talked about the common challenges people have (and frankly, we had) around the prospect of taking time off. (Most of it is around a feeling of financial insecurity – which, in my personal opinion, is a false fear). We also talked about Bronnie Ware’s “Top Five Regrets of a Dying Man”.

What was absolutely weird were some of the common things we have done during our time offs. Turns out he is a mixologist too!! And a runner!!! And practices music! Knows somebody who plays the tabla (which is what I play)!! I tried to encourage him to write up his life story in a blog. Did not need any encouragement – he already has multiple blogs and FB pages. (As an aside, he wrote about our meeting too!! – http://www.myfirstretirement.com/2016/01/15/gap-year/).

The picture below will give you a great idea of how much fun I had that evening with two complete strangers at a bar! I hope to run into them and exchange our stories more often!!

You probably recollect my blog from yesterday where I talked about running into Nancy Yates minutes before I got onto my flight to St. Louis. (see http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=9785). Guess what happened after I got down? Well, following my normal routine, I strolled towards the luggage belts to pick up my suitcase. I had barely reached the belt when the same thing happened again – I could hear a lady’s voice yelling “Rajib! Rajib!!”. I turned around – half incredulous that I would have two intersection points in a matter of a couple of hours. But there she was – Patricia Numprasong!!

Patricia and I go back some time. In fact, in the ranks of those people who have tried to keep me in line at office – like Marte, Kelly, Denise, Stefanie, Leah, Vicky and so on…, Patricia is way up their in my list who I flustered the most. There was a short period of time when I was asked to temporarily fill in the big shoes of my personal and professional friend Rob (who is now the CIO of Etihad Airways) and Patricia was entrusted to work with me. I did get to know about her family – especially her daughter who got married around that time and her son.

It was such a delight to meet Patricia after such a long time and catch up on her and her family. I also got to make a new friend – Doreen – who was with her.

This was my first flight in the new year. With these kind of perks, I can’t wait to get back on the road again….

Sharmila is back and that can mean only one thing – I am free to travel again. First working day – Monday morning – found me at the airport even before the sun had risen. Monday morning Atlanta airport – that is a Fitbit wearer’s dream scenario – and a flyer’s nightmare. You can easily log 10,000 steps just walking to the security queue and then weaving your way eventually to the TSA agent.

The good news is that I carry a long list of phone calls to make with me. First it was the birthday phone calls to India and Asia and then my daily calls to mom and my brother. By the time I cleared security, I was already on office calls. Those office calls continued as I went down to the train station and instead of jumping on to the train, just walked from terminal to terminal. Eventually came to my gate and noticed that they had just started boarding. The Fitbit violently vibrated signaling I had reached my goal for the day already.

As is my wont, instead of getting into the plane, I just got onto another office call and kept walking around the gate till the last person had gotten in. I love being one of the last persons to board. But as I was strolling from gate to gate, I suddenly heard – what appeared to be a lady’s voice yelling – “Oh! My God! Rajib???”.

Well, “Oh! My God” followed by your name – that too by a lady, in a uncommon place – is surely going to cause some consternation to anybody. Far more so for a nondescript person as I. I swung around and what did I see?? There was a lady sitting on the floor surrounded by her luggage and smiling at me from ear to ear.

And that is how I met Nancy Yates after a loooooong time! We did business together – well, almost did business together – in a prior life and have kept up with each other thru birthday greetings and all that but I had not seen her for the longest time. The funny part is she had to spend another minute explaining to her office mates – she was on a conference call when she spotted me – the reason for her unforeseen exuberance on the phone microphone.

Anyways, she was on a call and my flight was making last calls. I did get a chance to sit down with her, chat for a few minutes, get somebody to take a picture of us, promised to have a coffee with her soon and dart to my plane.

I was the last person to board. But the memory of seeing Nancy after such a long time will last me a longer time!!!

One of the best highlights of my trip to Dallas with family for Thanksgiving a couple of weeks back was that I finally got to meet Vicky. My previous attempts had all come to nought. I came very close almost a year back and in the last moment she was pulled away for some Government work.

Circa 1998 or so… I had barely crossed into my thirties. In spite of my awful capabilities, I had somehow quickly risen very high on the corporate ladder – yes, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to fool a lot of people a lot of times. While I was used to more work and more money, no amount of MBA training had prepared me for my first executive admin. And yet, there she was – Vicky Ruffin Cupit assigned to keep me honest 🙂 If I was the guy ricocheting off the walls, she was the wise person calming me down. Over the years, I did calm down and learned how to stabilize my calendar and communications. I never quite stabilized my travel routine though. I am sure all those “alter egos” I had in office who were assigned to keep me in check would agree. (Agreed Stefanie? Leah? Denise? Kelly? Marte? 🙂 )

While I had kept up with Vicky throughout the years – if not anything else, with that birthday wish every year, I never quite could meet her. That problem was solved two weeks back.

Early in the morning, Sharmila and I hopped into the rental car and headed north from Dallas. We kept driving up I-75 – crossed all the big new suburbs of Dallas and kept driving for miles and miles. Crossed two cute towns called Melissa and Anna and eventually reached the tiny town called Van Alstyne. All this time I was asking myself, how should I pronounce it – vAn alstyne or van alsTYne?

There is something about small towns in America that fascinate me. Part of it is the rural setting – I am any day, a dirt road, lot of land, green trees kind of person. But there is that other thing – the history of how those towns came of being. And then once in a while, against such a rural backdrop, you will see how modern civilization has imposed itself upon it. At the scheduled time, we showed up at our tryst – the only coffee place that was open there. Speaking of civilization imposing itself – it was in a Macdonalds attached to the gas station by the highway!!

There she was … waiting for us at a table. I am not sure how long the hug lasted but there were a lot of good old days that flashed thru my mind. As I have always said, whatever little I have made of myself – and as ephemeral as it might be – it is incredible how many people have lent their shoulders to get me where I am. It has always been an out of the world feeling for me to meet those humans much later in life!

Vicky took me thru the history of the small place. How a gentleman called Van Alstyne had founded the place. (BTW, those other two towns – Anna and Melissa – they were his daughters’ names!). What was even more fascinating was how her husband landed up in a small place called Van Alstyne. Apparently, her father in law and his brother ran away from home and crossed state borders and that is where they were dropped because they could not go any further!!  He took up a job with the local utility company. Many many years later, when Vicky and her husband bought a property, her father in law pointed out the utility posts that he had put in the ground. I did not realize till then that every post has a identification marker and name at the bottom!

As you can imagine, it was an absolutely magical time. Sharmila and I were totally absorbed in the stories. Suddenly, I remembered something. I asked her what happened to her eldest son. I remembered that she had told me that he and his wife drove eighteen wheelers together to transport goods. Apparently they loved the life on the road. That was nearly 20 years back. “Oh! They still are driving eighteen wheelers together. They log about 5000 miles a week!”.

Awesome! Someday, I want to hit the road and just keep driving and meet all those people that crossed my path in this life!!

Usually I am the one who gets helped by others in my journey to reconnect with everybody who has touched my life in the past. And in that journey, sometimes I find myself inadvertently helping others get reconnected. Do you remember how this week I got to talk to Preeti – my friend from elementary school days – thanks to Bidisha? My blog on that incident and thanking Bidisha thru it caught the eye of Rita – somebody I met for the first time in my life less than two weeks back.

Want to take a guess what happened next?

Why don’t I let Bidisha tell you the story herself…

[copying this from Bidisha’s FB entry….]

“Quid pro quo?

Today I received a friend request from Rita Chakravorty It took me a few minutes to remember who she is. And boy, it did open up the floodgates of memories from way back in 1995 from our time in Athens, GA. We remembered the evenings spent at Parna mashi and Kanu mesho’s home chatting the night away on music, literature, art and all other topics dear to Bengalees! We still remember many of Satya da’s jokes that Neil now shares with our friends. I remember Rita di’s beautiful sketches framed and mounted on Parna mashi’s wall, especially the bengali woman chopping a fish with a traditional knife (boti), and the manual rickshaw puller that always reminded me of Kolkata.

Once Rita di and I started furiously exchanging messages to catch up on yester years, I realized how she suddenly found me out. It was none other than Rajib Roy who helped us to re-connect! It was just yesterday when he was thanking me for connecting him with Preeti Saini Ajmani after 40 plus years. And now it seems like today is his turn for payback. 😉

Serendipity lives! I am glad that we have helped each other to find lost friends. Perhaps, this is our gift exchange program for Christmas 2015. 🙂

Happy holidays everyone! “

Happy holidays, indeed!

This is serendipity heaped upon more serendipity.

To begin with, I have no reason to meet Bidisha. The only reason I knew of her was that when we left Dallas, we referred our nanny to her. And that was all I knew till last summer when I brought my inlaws to visit us, while chatting with them, it came out that a Bidisha who lives in US is somehow related to them. A few probing questions later, turned out it was the same Bidisha! When I called her up, she made me promise her that I would visit her house next time I was in Dallas.

A year later, during this Thanksgiving, I did take my family to Dallas and Sharmila and I visited Bidisha and her family at her home and had a very nice evening. Speaking of serendipity, we were talking about how we landed in Atlanta eight years back and how Bidisha had landed in Georgia (in UGA in Athens) over twenty years back. Oh! Yeah! Forgot to mention – she lived in Georgia before we moved here. While talking about all the friends she had in Georgia, she talked about the first good friend she made in UGA – somebody called Preeti who had invited her to stay with her for a couple of weeks as she got herself familiarized with this country after leaving India.

Immediately, she turned to her husband and said “I am going to try and meet Preeti when I go to Minneapolis next week”.

Her husband, Neil’s response: “That would be cool. Tell them Hi”.

At this point I had no reason to butt in. But then again, that would so not be me 🙂 There is a Preeti Saini from my first grade that I have been trying to locate for a looooong time. If anybody every mentions about a Preeti our age group, they were guaranteed a question from me.. and that is what I asked:

Me: “What is her last name?”

Bidisha: “Preeti Ajmal”. And that is where the conversation should have ended. This once, I pestered on.

Me: “Not Preeti Saini?”

Bidisha (after a second): “You know, I think she is Preeti Saini Ajmal”. I got excited!!

Me: “From Durgapur?”. What is the chance I might have finally found her?

Bidisha: “No. Jamshedpur”. My hopes were dashed.

Just to hang on to some hope, I asked her – “Can you ask her if she was ever in Durgapur. And if so, did she go to Benachity Junior High School?”

And that was that. I had forgotten about that conversation altogether.

Last night, I had finished a business dinner and as I got into the car, I noticed that there was a Facebook notification. It said that Bidisha had tagged me in a picture. I assumed it was one more of those millions of pictures she posted in FB when we were in Dallas last week. Yes, if you ever wanted to meet somebody more active than me on FB, you should allow me to introduce you to Bidisha 🙂 I did not even open the post thinking I would do that later. Plus I needed to use my phone as a GPS.

Later, after I had checked into the hotel and finally retired in my bed, I went thru the post. It said “Tagging you because I did ask my friend Preeti if she ever lived in Durgapur before moving to Jamshedpur. Indeed, she did! So perhaps this is the same Preeti Saini you knew way back in Durgapur.”

The next half an hour was a blur. All I know was that I had jumped out of my bed. I had three streams of conversations going on at the same time. I had Bidisha on the phone. I was feverishly responding to FB messages from Preeti on Bidisha’s post. And I was at the same time keeping our WhatsApp group posted that I might have finally found out Preeti. Friends from Dubai, India were all popping up on WhatsApp asking me to get her to join the group.

Preeti, though was struggling to remember me. I was throwing classmates’ names after names to see if I could jog her memory. One of them stuck – Nishi Jain! I think she was starting to believe that I was not a weirdo. I was dying to talk to her but it was too late at night for her. Finally, I knew how to establish my credentials to somebody who could not remember me. I went to my iCloud picture library, downloaded my first grade picnic picture and sent it to her. And asked her “Are you not the third girl from the left in the front row?”.

That did it! Apparently,even she had difficulty recognizing herself but her husband looked at all the kids and immediately picked her out. Her kids were thrilled since they had never seen a picture of her from that era. Finally, I went to bed letting her know that I would call her the next day.

After finishing my work at Boulder, CO, on my drive to the Denver airport today, I finally talked to Preeti! Last time I did so in 1975 when she left us after third grade! 40 years back!!!

I can’t wait to visit Minneapolis now!

On my flight back to Atlanta now, I am just struck by the serendipity of it all. I have no idea how a simple discussion with my inlaws came up with the name Bidisha. There are so many Bidishas. Not sure why pushed them for more info. Not sure why it had to be the only Bidisha I know! Not sure why she mentioned to her husband in our presence last week that she would be visiting Preeti. Not sure why I kept pressing even after her first answer was “Ajmal”. Or why I did not give up when she told me she was from Jamshedpur? How come she remembered to ask although I had completely forgotten?

And yet for all that string of coincidences, apparently, I missed two easy leads. Preeti is very very close to the wife of a friend of mine from a prior company and we are in touch with each other very regularly!! Also, she is very close to another collegemate of mine. We are FB friends too! I had no idea!!

Who says life is not beautiful?

Thus spaketh Amelia Barr – the British novelist from the 1800s. In my own personal voyage, fashionably called “life”, I met a fascinating person this evening that reminded me so much about Amelia.

Sharmila, the kids and myself were a little early at the Dallas airport for our flight back home to Atlanta. We checked into the Skyclub. The kids settled down – predictably near power outlets and after securing the Wifi password from the lady at the front. Sharmila and I settled down at a random table and I went to the bar to grab a drink for us. At the bar, a familiar scenario played out. The lady asked me what she could get me. I said, as is my wont :-), “a million dollars”. Once she picked herself up after laughing her heart out, we started getting to know each other a little more.

For the next half an hour so (fortunately the bar on a late Saturday evening was not particularly crowded) I got to know Nancy Towne’s life journey a little more. Nancy is about five years older than my mom in India. And somewhere she mentioned “… when I came to this country….” A myriad of questions later, I figured out that Nancy was born in Copenhagen (we exchanged notes from the only trip I made to Denmark) and then moved to the USA. She has lived in many countries – thanks to her husband’s job in the Oil and Gas sector.

She had retired some time back. But then she lost her husband five years back. To keep herself productive and occupied, she joined as a volunteer at the DFW airport. Eventually, she took up a job and is now at the Delta Skyclub. What I was struck by was her zest for life and cheerfulness. She said she picked up this job so as to meet more people. She said that she has met some of the best people in her life in the airport and at the Skyclub.

After chatting with her for about half an hour, I called Sharmila and asked her to take a picture of us. If any of you are traveling Delta to or thru DFW, don’t forget to drop by the Skyclub and say Hi to this gem of a human being. Regardless of your disposition, you will come out very cheerful!

As an epilogue: Nancy lost her daughter this year to cancer. Coincidentally enough, Amelia had lost her husband and most of her kids to untimely deaths…