Picture this – circa 1996 – a newly minted manager (in fact, first time manager) – yours truly – gets a chance to present his team’s activities to the CEO. I invited my entire UI team to attend the presentation. The presentation went swimmingly well, except for one minor hitch.

And that hitch turned out to be my understanding of the English phrase “dropping the ball”. I was eloquently presenting all our achievements and successes. Somewhere, there, I had to explain that we had to deprioritize a sub project called “UI Editor” in favor of something else. In fact, the developer working on it – Stacy Roderman – had to be pulled from that and put on high priority project. However, I spoke about it as “We dropped the ball on the UI Editor”. The slide clearly showed Stacy’s name against the sub-project UI Editor.

I have no idea why, till that day, I thought “dropping the ball” meant you “set it aside”. Of course, in reality “dropping the ball” meant… errrr. “dropping the ball” 🙂 Funny part is that the CEO did not even flinch, nor have any questions. But I could see that Stacy – sitting in the room – was visibly upset.

At the end of the presentation – which, as I said, went extremely well – I was feeling really good, when another team mate – Tom Moellering, came by and said “You might want to talk to Stacy”. Eventually, I went to Stacy’s room and I could see that she was upset. Not knowing what is going on and wanting to give some privacy. I asked her if she wanted to go to Starbucks for a coffee. She readily agreed.

We did not talk much as we walked to the car. I had barely started the car and started pulling out of the parking lot when she started laying it down to me. She was bawling and taking me to the cleaners, demanding to know why would I berate her in public – that too in front of the CEO. As you can imagine, I had not the faintest idea what just hit me.

I did keep my calm and tried to get out of her what seemed to be the problem. When I finally realized what the problem was, I was really amused by the comical scale of the misunderstanding caused by my lack of knowledge of an English phrase. She did not find it that funny at all. (Fortunately, she found it as funny as I when we talked about it this evening – which is why I am even daring to write it 🙂 )

While that was not the only time I got into trouble for not being knowledgeable of the language called English, it was certainly when it was healed very quickly.

We had a great laugh as we talked about it. We, being, of course, Stacy, her husband Brian and myself. Both Stacy and I worked in the same team and over time I got close to her and her husband. That was over ten years back. We had two kids each roughly around the same time and we continued to work in the same company roughly till around the same date.

Another funny story. Coming from India about a quarter century back, I was not terribly used to the concept of divorce and re-marriage. I mean, I knew what it meant – but I had no friends who had parents or siblings who were divorced. Or remarried. Against that backdrop, I am sure you will be sympathetic to my condition when one day, while describing something that I cannot remember, Stacy talked about “My stepfather’s ex …..”. She continued with her sentence but I was stuck at that phrase. By the time she had finished her story, I was still staring at her blankly while my overworked brain was desperately trying to compute who the heck is your “stepdad’s ex” 🙂

It was fascinating catching up with Stacy and Brian today. Once again, I reminded myself how blessed my journey has been by the presence of some really great fellow travelers on this journey we choose to call “life”.

I will let Bipasha explain…. 🙂

Got a chance to meet up with two of my oldest friends from Dallas area over dinner last night. It is always great to spend some time with Aniruddha and Indrani. Last evening was no different.

I remember – way back in 1995, I would play tennis with Aniruddha. Every single weekday. At 5 pm sharp. In his apartment complex – that was often referred to as CP-6!!! Not that our tennis skills was something we wrote home about; nevertheless, we would show up at 5 pm without fail. After a good game or two, we would sit around the staircase of the apartment building chatting ourselves to glory 🙂

Later, Indrani and Sharmila went to school together and we made some great common friends. This was when we were young couples without kids. A great weekend day meant we got up late, called each other up and showed up at an Indian restaurant a few minutes before they closed the buffet down and ate enough to justify a whole month’s worth of tennis games. 🙂

Unbelievably enough, I was a teetotaler then!! Speaking of which, we missed Sharmila last evening so much that we did the next best thing… the three of us had her favorite Pinot Noir 🙂 I am sure that is exactly what she would have us do 🙂

One of the best things about business meetings in Dallas is that I get to create intersection points with so many people that had crossed my path in the long past. The first one started with a guy I met on June 3rd, 1991 in the training room of COSL in SEEPZ in Mumbai – about two and a half decades back.

It was magical to get back in touch with a guy I had not met in many many years and is certainly the most creative person I have ever had a chance to know.

Aditya Garg!!!

Not sure where to start….

Maybe the fact how he was so meticulous and organized in everything he did? When, in those days, we cared very little about how crumpled our office clothes were, Aditya would invariably be found ironing in shirt before we left our flat to catch the office bus.

Or maybe that his flair for creativity rubbed off on me for a long time? If you have ever invited me to your house for dinner or lunch after 2005, you probably also remember the meticulously written Thank You letter written in a fountain pen with calligraphic nib on a monogrammed paper that you received in your snail mail. Well, Aditya was the guy who taught me calligraphy. He is the guy who taught me how to make calligraphic nibs.

You see, unlike in US, we could not simply walk up to a store in India and get the six pack Sheaffer calligraphic nib set. He taught me how to buy normal nibs and then patiently rub on a sandpaper and then rub even more smoothly on concrete to smooth out a hopefully-now-flat nib. He taught me how to make the two types of calligraphic nibs – flat and 45 degrees.

He was also the engineer par excellence. He had devised this lamp shade that was balanced by hooks in four corners of the room with four varying weights. Here is the marvel – you could place the lamp anywhere in the three dimensional space of the room and it would balance itself there for as long as you wanted!

Even to this day, he has not lost his zest for independence in thinking and deciding what is best for him – regardless of what the world thought. That, I mused this evening, looking at him, has to be the ultimate recipe for success in this world.

I gotta to meet him and learn from him more….