It was a cold winter evening 13 years ago when I showed up very late to a party at Rupak’s house. That itself was a change of plans, thanks to a perfectly timed text message from the host enticing me with a glass of red wine.

That evening, I met Rupak’s sister, Rupa and brother-in-law, Swarup. A bit of digging into his past later, I discovered that Swarup was indeed a dear friend of my own brother from their engineering college days. What were the chances of that?

Sharmila and I have been to Australia a few times over the years. We have visited Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Cairns, Uluru, and even Hobart. But we have never made it to Melbourne, where Rupa and Swarup live, or Perth, where my childhood best friend Avijit and his wife Rakhi live.

This time, Melbourne was part of my plans. Things, of course, did not go smoothly, thanks to the volcano in Vanuatu.

But thanks to the extra effort put in by Swarup and Rupa, we did manage to get together. Coincidentally… over some red wine!

What a wonderful evening it turned out to be. If you had overheard our conversations, you would have been forgiven for thinking that we meet a couple of times every week. Such was the ease and familiarity of the discussions.

The topics, admittedly, were age appropriate. You know, body parts that hurt for no apparent reason, our children’s careers, retirement plans, financial investments, and all the other exciting things that advanced age has to offer.

This is what makes those insanely long-haul flights so worthwhile, after all.