Before we landed, the airplane took us into the Pacific and swing back to align itself to the west-east runway. That gave a chance to see the long beach line all along the country. The town below is La Libertad – which is where I will be going tomorrow. To the right, which we cannot see, is El Tunco – famous for its surf waves.
The entire journey from Atlanta over Georgia, Florida, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala – all I could see from my carefully chosen window seat was … clouds. Finally, about 30 minutes away from San Salvador, the clouds started breaking up and I got my first glimpse of the country.
Seems like a very mountainous country. Makes sense – since it is squarely in the Ring of Fire.
Bored by the clouds, I say in my seat and brushed up my Spanish and picked up some trivia about El Salvador. The following might interest you:
1. El Salvador is the smallest Central American country.
2. It is the only Central American country that does not have a Caribbean coast.
3. This blew me away… There are about 10 million Salvadorans. 1 out of 3 of them live in the USA!!! The whole country has same number of people as Greater Atlanta!
Taking off eastward from Runway 10-28 in Atlanta, you would expect that we would have swung right to head south to El Salvador. Instead, we swung left, circled the city and then headed south. That gave me a clean shot of the city right from the top. You can see the whole stretch of where 85 merges with 75 and then the split again. You can also see the airport to your top stereo left.
And the other thing I spotted? The very reason why we moved the Atlanta. The office I used to go from 2007 to 2014!
Taking full advantage of Sharmila not being in the country, I decided to embark on my own international trip. This will get me to the half century mark – 50 countries. El Salvador!!
Why El Salvador? Well, to be honest because I know nothing about the country. Other than the name of the capital. I also have not come across anybody who has been to El Salvador. Have you?
When I went around asking people (in the USA) about El Salvador, the only guidance I got was to be very careful. It is unsafe there. I have a nagging suspicion that the picture portrayed by media does not do justice to the country. (During my trips abroad, I am often stunned by what they think about the USA – from what they see in their media).
We will find out.
There is another thing. Many years back, I was in Spain for some work. Our country head there had pulled me aside and let me know that he would be going back to his motherland – El Salvador by the end of the year. Instinctively, I had told him that I would visit him some day.
If everything goes to plan, he is going to get the surprise of his life today!!
My mother-in-law is the only living parent Sharmila and I have. We went from full count of four to merely one in literally two and a half years.
Kudos to Sharmila for taking the younger one – Nikita – to visit her grandmother and her great-grandmother last year. She took up the cudgels on behalf of generational bonding one more time and is now taking the elder one – Natasha – to meet her only surviving grandparent.
Being a person who went to see his parents every single quarter for over 13 years (we are talking 33 hours one way here), I cannot but feel proud that human beings are getting together with human beings that mean something to them.
More power to the Ghose family!! I hope my father in law is watching from the Heavens. Of all the four parents, he is the one who I bonded with the most!!!
Watching my mother in law graduate from getting mortified by the iPad changing its orientation as she turned it to sending me pictures of roses on my birthday has been nothing short of a marvel.
For such a person, I have to believe, nothing can bring more pride than watching their progeny flourish. I cannot wait to see some pictures of Natasha and my mother in law together.
To up and above!! (Sharmila and Natasha are wheels up as we speak)
1991 June. I was sitting with the rest of the new entrants in the training room in an air conditioned windowless room in SEEPZ, Mumbai. Presently, somebody came and announced which project each one of us would go to. Mine was “CPC”.
Subsequently, I met my super boss (my boss’s boss) – Raj Sundaramurthy. That started an incredible journey for both of us. We are extremely different persons – well, other than the curious penchant for dad jokes. He is an accomplished cricketer and bridge player. I am decidedly not. He is a movie buff. I had once asked Salman Khan who he was (we were sitting next to each other on a flight and everybody was staring at him). He is the best software manager I have come across (and I have come across a few). I became a software manager because my coding skills sucked.
And yet, through all that, we have stuck together as thick friends. We have run together. We have laughed together. We have had sinful amounts of alcohol together. We have been each others’ support system during our darkest days in personal lives. And we have always tried to outdo each other with our dad jokes. He inflicting his ill-gotten knowledge of Bengali was more than met by my staggeringly poor Tamil (for a person who has spent 4 years in Tamil Nadu).
One of those low days in life involves his wife slamming the phone down on him. We were working late at night. His poor wife, in advanced stage of pregnancy with the first child, had to come down from her flat and walk to a nearby telephone booth to call him. It was VERY late at night and she had no idea what had happened to him. Sensing imminent danger, Srini and I flung ourselves to his service. We took an auto rickshaw and accompanied him so that his wife’s anger would at least partially melt upon seeing us.
Upon seeing us, the only thing that melted was Srini’s and my presence as we high tailed it from his door. I do not think we even bothered to wait for the elevator as we scampered down the stairs to find the nearest auto rickshaw.
Well, that aforementioned wife – Viji – now calls me their “forever” friend. Never seen a lovelier – or for that matter, a more gullible couple 🙂
Being the glutton for punishment that he is, he let me work with him in not one more, not two more but three more companies with him. (There is only one company I have worked in where we did not work together).
He went from pillar to post on his engineering skills. I settled for a less demanding CEO job.
To this day, through that interesting, intriguing and invigorating life journeys, our paths have intertwined in a double helix like a DNA. If you discount that DNA bit, he is nothing but an elder brother to me, thata I never had.
Thank you Raj and Viji for letting me live yet another of those brilliant evenings together.
I raise my drink this evening to many more of them in the future.
It was early 2006. I had finished a few months with the company I had joined the previous year. The CEO – who was my manager – took me out for a lunch to my favorite dinner place. When I say my favorite dinner place, I mean the TGIF that was next to the Courtyard I stayed in because I did not want to venture out too far in the Boston cold. I lived in warm Dallas and trekked to Boston every week.
My dinner those days were two glasses of wine and some French Fries. Or as the aforementioned CEO lovingly called it “Dinner of the Champions”!!
After reviewing my performance, he dropped a big surprise on me – “I want you to move to sales and run sales. I think you will be good at it.” I was fairly taken aback. While I had run service sales before, this was the first time running product sales. And those breaks do not come too often.
I cannot speak for him how it worked out for him, it certainly worked out great for me. I can honestly say that in a big way that break made me who I am today professionally.
After many a moon, I got to meet that gentleman – Jonathan Colehower today at a Starbucks. There was a flurry of memories from the past that came back. The people, the customers, the investors and all the fun we had. I had not seen him for a very long time.
Of course, we had kept up thru phone calls in between. Thru his health crisis and his wife’s. It was heartening to see how the Colehower family trumped over the vagaries of life. It was especially encouraging to hear how his three daughters have grown up so successfully.
Jon still lives with his health crisis. And the conversation today of how he deals with it was another reminder to me about life being so much about what you make of it and not playing the victim card.
It was so good to see him doing well physically, professionally and most importantly, emotionally. He seemed happy with his lot. That, above all, is what we all strive for!
May your tribe increase, Jon!!
From Bourbon and Boots:
The Verrazano cocktail is a mix of bourbon whiskey, dry vermouth, and herbal liqueur. It was created in the early 20th century for a New York bartender named Johnnie Solon. The cocktail is said to have been created for a banquet celebrating the completion of the Verrazano Bridge, which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn. This drink is named after Giovanni da Verrazzano, who was an Italian explorer and navigator who had explored New York Bay in 1524 and claimed it for France.
Bourbon Whiskey, Sweet Vermouth, Apricot Liqueur and Campari.
