Un-freaking-believable !!!
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?
Tagging Preeti, Sharmila, Bidisha, Neil, Sangha, Usha
Rajib, Its a small world and you are amazing. You remember your third grade classmates! Very few people make the time and effort to connect with old friends and colleagues….. but you always do. Subhasis Ojha and I truly admire your skill. In today’s crazy world with the hectic work and life schedule you still make time to connect with people out there. At the end of the day that is why we are all here in this world – in this beautiful small world, same place, same time! Its truly commendable!
Thank you much, Sangha!!
Aww…Rajib Roy…yes indeed my friend life is beautiful…I am simply amazed that I connected with you after so many years…and the class picture from 1st grade is simply PRICELESS…Though my memory from my childhood days is a little fuzzy…I am happy to connect with you all and hope to meet many of you and your families someday..Cheers! And Thank You Bidisha Rudra…
Fabulous post. One correction, Preeti’s last name is Ajmani, not Ajmal. That said, you are probably the only other person besides me who derives immense pleasure from re-connections. I am a hard core believer of serendipity. Of course, without which I would not have met so many wonderful people in my life, including Neil. A chance encounter in an elevator over Econometrics. Will tell you the story some day!
You met Neil over Econometrics? Aren’t those the people for whom the real world is always the exception case? 🙂
It was the case of outliers in love! 😉
You are not an outlier. You just have not found your distribution yet 🙂
It’s a ‘discrete’ distribution! 😉
And the “exceptional” real world types think that they are too unique for any distribution to tie them down
Bidisha, it has been twenty years since the elevator episode. I think we can declare it to be a “normal” distribution
Except when you get angry. Then it is “Gaussian” 🙂
Anomaly is the rule in this case…so I am pretty sure, Neil will vouch for my “exponential” characteristics…
???? I think the discussion is getting “Poisson”ed 🙂
Which distribution you are referring to: past or present? The present distribution won’t be complete without including you in my friend set, so that would give rise to some skewness 🙂 And Gaussian is a continuous normal distribution, so what is the exception?
Ah! Past Imperfect Present Tense 🙂
As Woodsworth said Bidisha, “What’s in a name?”.
What was that? It was not Woddsworth? It was Shakespeare?
Shakespeare. But who cares! As Gulzar said, Naam gum jayega, chehera yeh badal jaye ga, meri awaaz hi pehchaan hai. 🙂
Of course, in my case, my over-active FB page will be my “pehchaan”, right Rajib?!
I probably will remember you for many more things….
That I am sure of.
Oh! Come on! What is in a name?
Have heard that one before..haven’t we?
BTW, Preeti, sorry about the Ajmal thing. Edited it now.
And the “exceptional” real world types think that they are too unique for any distribution to tie them down ☺
Which would imply the elevator was going up when you tied her down? 🙂
What a great story! Love it.
Great story!
Another achievement I see from your post is to make Neil write so many messages in respond to your post. I have never seen Neil write so many Facebook messages in such a short period of time – heck, for that matter for any period of time – responding to any posting. Maybe relatively small achievement in comparison to you being able to connect to your friend , Preeti after 40 years – but still significant accomplishment, from my point of view.
Amiteshda,
As I said, Rajib does have a “skewing” influence; positive or negative is a purely academic debate may not be of interest to the real world 🙂 He certainly skewed my FB participation frequency!
Rajib-da, your friend Preeti happens to be a friend of a family friend of ours 🙂 The Durgapur/Jamshedpur connection is a huge network 😉 Awesome that you found your friend after 40 yrs!
There we go, Sreerupa!!
Rajib you were in my part of the woods – you better let me know the next time before slipping out unnoticed
Wow friends forever. Beautiful feeling to be connected to old sweet memories
Manajit, I had no time. Landed in Denver, dinner meeting. drove to boulder, morning meeting, straight to airport!!
OMG you folks sound so fundu. All that funda is going right over my head. I know bengali’s were smart but did not know that smart.
In case you missed it Preeti Saini, was also known as Preeti Somalia, so that they could distinguish her from Preeti Somal who was pretty, and desirable–as opposed tp Preeti Somal who looked like a refugee kid from Somalia.
I thought Neil was set up by Somali Mishra Burgess who was also another Gawd helpe case. It is like saying if there was a contest between Somali and Preeti who would be the outlier.
There we go!!