Found this while rummaging thru my mom’s kitchen!! This was my “tiffin box” (my daughters call these “lunch box”es) – in fact my only tiffin box in my entire life. My dad bought me this in 1972 when I was kindergarten. I used it till 1983 (tenth grade)!!!
The original bright blue color is all but faded off. Amazingly, the “Ranjit” sticker is still there – well, some part of it is.
This was my best friend from 10:35 to 11:00 am every school day. Lunch was invariably a boiled egg, bread and a banana. And on special days, a sweet.
Atish, if you are reading this post, you probably remember how often we used to exchange my boiled egg for your “lobongolatika” !!!
On some days, during after school hours, this tiffin box also doubled up as a cricket bat !!! A tree for a wicket, tiffin box for a bat and a “cambis” ball… and we would keep ourselves endlessly occupied till our pickup bus would come. The tiffin box still has pockmarks from some of those wicked shots!!!
That one really pulled me a few decades back… and I am amazed at our parents value system of not considering anything to be too old to be used!!!

Impressed the heck out of my nephews and niece by showing them a magic. All they had to do is type a word in my iPhone (in the Notes app) without showing me – in fact I would hide in the next room so that I could not see it. Of course, I was sitting there with my iPad watching the Notes app synch and show me the word on the iPad immediately !! 🙂 A few dramatic moves and abracadabra later, I had their jaws falling in awe as I “telepathically” blurted out their word !! 🙂
I betcha Steve Jobs never thought of this application of his products!!!
My smarty-pants 9-year old nephew thinks he has cracked it. He believes I am Googling “What is Rishu typing?”. He is going to be very disappointed when he grows up and truly realizes what the Internet can or cannot do 🙂

Here it is Shridhar…

Can you help me with this?
Since the crack of dawn, my brother, dad and I have been sitting outside and enjoying the world slowly waking up. As we watched the rain soaked trees, buildings, birds and so on, we noticed something in the next building that we could not explain.
See the black, grill like overhang structure just outside the AC unit in the picture? It seems to be bolted onto the sill above. What on God’s green earth is that? What is the purpose?
My brother and I cannot seem to crack it.
Do you know? That is a AC unit, is it not?

Vivekananda Setu

In the few hours that I am in Kolkata, I was lucky enough to spend half an hour with my classmate from fifth grade – Debasish Chakraborty. The last time I saw him was in 1986 when I ran into him outside a movie hall!! (Most people who know me closely enough are probably wondering what was I doing outside a movie hall 🙂 Fact is I have seen about six movies in some movie hall in my entire life. “Bhalobasa Bhalobasa” in Durgapur Cinema in 1986 was one of them!!
Well, he is a much accomplished central government official now. To relive our old times, we just sat outside on the side streets outside his office and caught up on each others’ parents, family and old schoolmates over a couple of cups of tea!! Living thru these moments is what gets me really excited about life. Who knew 27 years later we will share a cup of tea again?
Another interesting tidbit on him – I think he is the only person whose entire family – he, his wife and his twin kids (more on their talent in a later post) are my FB friends!!