It was July 31, 2021. After a couple of days of visiting colleges in the North East, Nikita and I sat down at a riverside restaurant in Providence to relax and have dinner. A young lady had served us that evening. She seemed very friendly.

The restaurant was relatively empty (Covid was still affecting business). That gave us some time to chat her up.

“What is your name?” I had asked her.
“Shams”, she said.
“Shams? Is that a short for something?”
“No. Shams is the name.”
“What is the full name?”, I had asked a bit intrigued.
“Shams Aliyeva”
“Ok. That is not from this part of the world, right?”
“No. I am from Azerbaijan.”
“Azerbaijan? Baku?”
“Yes.”

I told her about my friend Roger and how we were planning to follow up our trip to Mongolia with a trip to Azerbaijan.

“Why Azerbaijan?”

“I do not know. We had no good reason to go to Mongolia either. I guess I like how the name Azerbaijan – especially pronounced with the Middle Eastern / Caucasian style rolls nicely off the tongue?”

“When will you go to Azerbaijan?”

“You know, I need to plan that out. I will make sure we meet your family when we are there.”

—

Well, roll forward to today. Roger and I never made it to Azerbaijan. But Sharmila and I did!! And I also knew from my birthday calls that Shams had moved back to Baku.

Now, you can guess the rest. There we were – the three of us – enjoying some coffee by a street side cafe in Baku. And catching up on life.

She even remembered Nikita and brought her a small gift. It has the Azerbaijani symbol “buta” (in India, we call it by the same name – in Bengal, I think we call it “kalka”).

Amazing intersection point… from a chance conversation with somebody who waited on us to meeting her half a world away!!