“Excuse me, Rajib, can I bug you for a moment? I just wanted to introduce you to this gentleman – Subhra Lahiri”
“Not a problem, at all”, said I. And it really was not, since I was actually writing my blog post about the very person who was talking to me – Suranjan-da!!!

As Suranjan-da stepped back to his table to re-join his family for dinner, I realized the real reason he had introduced me to Subhra. Turns out Subhra and I have more common friends than we could literally count on our fingers. And the funny thing is that our paths had never crossed before. We had never studied in the same schools but had enough common friends that we studied with – obviously at different points of time. He was even the bench mate in eleventh and twelfth grades with Avijit who was my best friend and studied with me till tenth grade.

As we were discovering many of those common connections – some even starting from my first grade like Mallika – I realized something. His family was waiting outside the restaurant door for him. I did the quick math and realized that they had just finished their dinner and was on their way out. Torn between whether to let him go or pull his family into the discussion as I continued to plough thru the fertile grounds of “intersection points”, I did what you probably might have guessed – got his family into the discussion too!!

I certainly am glad I did since the next two minutes went something like this…
“Hello! I am Rajib!”
“Hi! I am Dipita”
….. some more pleasantries….
“So, where are you from?”, I asked
“Durgapur”
“Oh! You are a Durgapurian too?”
“Which batch?”
“1986 tenth grade”
“Aha! Which school?”
“GMPS”
“I see! Would you know a Sharmila Ghose?”
“Name certainly sounds very familiar. Cannot put a face to it though”.
“Wait”, I said and fished out my phone and showed her a picture of the subject of our discussion.
“Oh! Yes! The face is familiar too. How do you know her?”
“Well, rumor has it that I might have married her some twenty three years back!”
A few long seconds of laughter back, we caught up on Sharmila’s friends too. And by that I mean I updated her on the latest status of Sharmila’s friends!!

The one thing I want is my daughter Natasha to meet their daughter Ishita. They are the same age and have the same love for the language English. While Natasha is tending more towards the journalistic side, Ishita wants to go the teaching way. Oh! did I mention that both of them apparently share the view that parents serve the sole purpose of embarrassing their kids? 🙂 Believe it or not, we actually talked about it!!!

Somewhat reflecting, I realize we are about half an hour to the new year here in India. The day started by concluding a great three days resort stay with the three families I know the longest – my own. And then in the last six hours, I got to know three of the most wonderful families – Sujan’s, Suranjan-da’s and Subhra’s. One a classmate, one a brother of a classmate and one I had never known in my life!

If I can end every year on this kind of a note, I reckon, I am way ahead of the game!!!