Got to know the new staff member in Chiringa – Darren. While he was having dinner, I got to know more about him. Amazing life history. The difficulties he had to overcome and yet not get strayed into wrong choices is beyond impressive. Hopefully, I will get to know him even more in the days to come.
I had last met Gary in 2017 when he was in town to settle his daughter in Georgia Tech.
Fast forward 9 years. His daughter has settled in Atlanta and he was visiting her for the Memorial Day weekend. For once, we were not traveling.
That offered the opportunity for us to get together for breakfast!!
You may remember how, in the past, I had been stumped a couple of times by the responses of the person waiting on us when I replied “Yes, A million dollars.” to their usual “Can I get you something else?”. Here are some of those old incidents…
Lunch lady Olivia Ashleah Milwaukee Lady
This evening a similar thing happened. Akshay and I were catching up a quick drink at Nando’s. Like most other days, Rahli was taking care of us. This time too, when she asked if we needed something, I said “A million dollars would help!”.
Guess what she came up with?
Akshay took the picture for us!!
The last time you would have seen the three guys in this picture together was probably sometime in early 1994. That’s not just “a while ago” — that’s literally more than half our lives ago. Let that sink in for a moment while we all reach for our reading glasses.
Raj and I went to business school together, and then fate (and questionable corporate hiring decisions) put us in the same company for our first jobs. That’s where we met Srini. The three of us, along with a rotating cast of equally clueless and over-enthusiastic colleagues, lived in adjacent apartments in Mumbai – essentially our own version of a low-budget sitcom.
These two are remarkable in completely different ways. Take Raj, for instance. Back in the day, he casually declared that he would retire by 40. Naturally, the rest of us laughed and went back to worrying about month-end deadlines. But Raj? He actually did it. And not just retired — he’s gone on to live one of the richest, most grounded lives I know: always present for his parents, his kids, and everything that truly matters. If “living life on your own terms” had a brand ambassador, it would be him.
Srini and I, on the other hand, bonded over our shared love for writing software — because clearly, we were the cool ones. He went to IIT in my state, and I went to IIT in his. So naturally, our conversations were a delightful mess: some broken Bengali from him, some equally broken Tamil from me, and a whole lot of very passionate Informix 4GL thrown in for good measure. Honestly, it’s a miracle we understood each other at all.
Meeting again after all these years felt like no time had passed — and also like several lifetimes had. It was a magical morning, complete with us regaling the (very patient) better halves with stories from the good old days.
Stories like Raj dancing solo at Louis Kahn Plaza — as if the rest of the world didn’t exist — and Srini’s legendary “For here or to go?” moment at McDonald’s… which, trust me, deserves its own dedicated post someday.
But those are stories for another day.
P.S. Don’t I look like the paternal head in a family where the progeny has gathered around him to take, perhaps, one of those last pictures in his life? 🙂
It was a bit early in the morning. I’d already been up for over an hour in my hotel room. For all the enthusiasm I show about making my own coffee at home, I never feel like doing it in a hotel room. Instead, I wait for the lobby coffee shop to open. I suppose I enjoy the ritual — grab a cup, sit down, and absentmindedly watch people going about their day. Lobby, street, wherever. It turns into a kind of accidental mindfulness exercise.
So that day too, at 6 a.m., I wandered downstairs and got myself a cappuccino. Just as I was about to settle into my usual lobby chair, I thought I recognized a face. He was about ten yards away. I caught a quick side profile — and then, almost immediately, just the back of his head.
Now, I was staying at a Courtyard Marriott near Yale for work. And this gentleman is a Partner at a top strategy firm. What on earth would he be doing here?
After a couple of seconds of mental gymnastics, I took a shot in the dark.
“Neil?”
No response.
Now, this was actually a very calculated move on my part. Had I called out “Sudipto,” it would’ve been abundantly clear whom I was addressing — we were, after all, the only two Indians in the lobby. If I were wrong, things could’ve gotten awkward very quickly. But “Neil”? That leaves room for plausible deniability. If he turned out not to be my Neil, I could always just peer past him and pretend I was calling out to some other Neil. After all, every Courtyard Marriott is crawling with Neils at 6 a.m., right?
Encouraged by my own logic, I raised my voice a little louder.
He turned around.
Moment of truth.
And… nailed it.
It was Sudipto “Neil” Banerjee. After—what—twelve years? The last time must have been around 2014, when my in-laws were visiting and we dropped by his place. Since then, life had happened — moves to Germany, back again, new house, the usual chapters, you know.
Turns out he was in town with his kids for that inevitable parental rite of passage: college visits.
I didn’t get to meet the kids — they were still fast asleep upstairs — but I did get to spend some time catching up with Neil.
And it reminded me of something I probably don’t act on enough: every time I meet him, I walk away having learned something.
Which is reason enough to not let another twelve years slip by.
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!!
