I have worked in industries ranging from banks to supply chains to identity fraud solutions to geospatial. But the current one – education – is probably the most mission oriented. I can see every day how we make a difference to kids.

And that gives rise to some interesting intersection points on the road. Take today for example. I had flown into Chicago, taken the train to downtown and started individual meetings. Coffee with Demetre, drinks with Nurzhan and then dinner with Lela.

Lela was already at the dinner table when I showed up a bit late. For all that patience she had shown, the first thing I did was made her get up from the table and move to the bar area. For some reason, when it comes to drinks or dinner, I prefer the high chairs.

I am so glad I did it though. We had barely settled down when one of the restaurant employees – a young lady – came up to us excitedly and looking at Lela, exclaimed “Miss Day?” Lela immediately recognized her.

As a background, Lela was with TFA (Teach For America) before she joined us. TFA teachers tend to work with inner city schools frequently in the poorest and most violent parts of the city offering lessons to kids who often tend to be troubled . Lela worked in such a school in Chicago before joining us. She was very clear that she was not going to take me there after sunset – it gets so unsafe.

Well, as it turns out, the young lady – Keisha – went to the same school. In fact, her younger sister was in Lela’s class. They recognized each other immediately.

I was totally intrigued by their conversations. Keisha was talking about her troubled childhood.

“How old are you?”, I asked her
“23”
“Oh! I have a daughter one year elder to you. I heard your conversation. Were you really troubled?”
“Oh! yes. I used to throw books at my teachers!”
“How about now?”, I teased her
“Well, I have settled down now. It is a little late now but now I understand how teachers like Miss Day made all the difference to kids like me.”

Keisha told me part of her life story. Puerto Rican by descent, she grew up like many other inner city kids with access to very little. She had her first baby when she was 19 and second one when she was 21. But she has a steady income now from the restaurant and is rebuilding her life.

To my usual “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”, she felt she needed a little more time to think that thru.

She thanked Lela again and left us to our dinner. I could not help wonder what kind of environment Lela and other TFA teachers have to teach in. And my respect for them redoubled for doing what they do. And making a real difference in the world. To the young kids that need it the most.

Nayan and Deepma were in town to drop Niharika at Emory. Sharmila and I had an outstanding evening with them. After seeing Niharika, I went back to the photo database to locate her in the archives.

The small kid in blue top? Yep, it is the same Niharika – this is back in 2004. (The other girl with her is our own Natasha !) We missed Avichal this time around!!

Sometime last year, my friend from engineering college days – G. Balakrishnan – who we simply referred to as “GB” (engineering students of four decades back were well ahead of their times in recognizing the uselessness of multiple syllables or even the need to spell out everything – which, I am glad to see, the current generation and social media is finally getting around to embracing 🙂 ) had sent a rather strange request from India.

His request was to give some time over the phone to a friend of his who lives in the Bay area. I assumed the gentleman – Shriram Narayanan being his name – would want to discuss career move related topics. The request was strange because what his friend wanted to discuss had nothing to with work at all. It was about my blog! Apparently, he had a lot of questions.

I finally got to call him up on Oct 27th. I was driving from one meeting to another and took the call from my car. A scheduled half an hour meeting went over an hour. I still remember discussing finiteness of time, how do we recognize in ourselves what we are good at and such absorbing topics. Regrettably, I had to end the call since I had to go to a meeting.

This trip to SFO, I actually caught up with him face to face. Over a cup of coffee, we continued with where we had left last October. The discussions were refreshing and invigorating. Truth be told, I have not come across too many people with whom I can have this kind of in depth discussions on very different topics. (Magesh Ranganathan pops up as an immediate exception to my mind)

“Learning” was a big topic of discussion this time around. Why we learn and how we learn. And why we stop learning. How we learn from experience but that in itself is a tricky process since that assumes accurate recollections from memory – which is an absolute myth. (this does not include certain other kind of learnings – like skill learning – biking, swimming – where the brain somehow involuntarily commits to some parts of memory that it has no problem recovering on demand even after five decades!)

Hope to have more sessions with Shriram in the future.

I thought I knew a thing or two about fountain pens and nibs and all that. But at the end of the evening, I realized how little I knew about what makes those pens and nibs come to life. All because I got to have dinner with a pen pal of mine from the other end of the world.

Let’s back up a little. About twenty years back, I had a colleague at work – Madhuri. She was fifteen years younger than me and we worked in two different ends of the world – Dallas and Bangalore – but of course, we knew each other since we were in the same team.

It was much later – and by that time, she had moved to Singapore with her husband Rupesh – that we realized we shared a common fascination for writing with fountain pens. It was a post on Facebook that she had put up that had triggered my attention.

And that started a long series of writing letters to each other – between Atlanta and Singapore. The topics invariably were about life, travel, parents in India, old friends and so on.

In one of those letters earlier this year, she let me know that they were moving from Singapore to San Francisco. Even after they moved, the letter writing continued. In fact, just last week, something happened when I was setting up my small workspace in the new house. I was carefully putting her last few letters in my letter organizer when Nikita happened to stroll by. I showed her some of the letters and she justifiably marveled at the beautiful handwriting.

Well, guess what? I met up with Madhuri and Rupesh for dinner this evening. The board meeting scheduled in San Francisco offered this opportunity.

I never quite told you what makes fountain pens come to life, did I? Well, that is where Madhuri’s expertise comes in. Paper and ink. I am always frustrated by the quality of paper in the USA. Got some great tips on how to choose paper and some good brands from Japan from her.

You all think I am nuts that I have over 100 fountain pens? Get this – she has 65 different colors of ink!! I have only 8) I learnt a lot about the chemistry and quality of inks from her. I even picked up some new terms like “sheening” and “pooling”. She had brought a few different varieties of paper to demonstrate her points to me.

Incredible evening for me!

We had settled down for lunch with our friends after docking the boat in Fish Tales. Suddenly, Sharmila thought she spotted something. Or rather, somebody.

“Isn’t that Antara?” she asked.

I had watched the kid playing in the sand but had not noticed his parents. After Sharmila pointed out, I realized that the kid’s mom was none other than Antara. It took me a second to recognize her behind her shades. Went down to meet them and then Milind (he was trying to get a table for his family) came by too.

Back at our table, explaining how I knew Antara was bit of an interesting moment. Antara, you see, grew up in the same house as I did in Durgapur! After we left that house and moved to a new one, her parents had moved in to what used to be our house.

Later I had found out that my mom was her teacher in primary school and that at some point of time, my brother was her sister’s math tutor! By the way, I had never met Antara when I was in India!

And we ran into each other on Lake Lanier at Fish Tales!

“So, do you remember me?”, I asked the young kid. (He had seen me a couple of times before)

“Yes. Red-motorcyle uncle!”

It so reminded me of my Durgapur days. When we would often refer to uncles by their vehicle make or color – “Rajdoot motorcycle kaku” or “Sobuj Lambretta kaku” !!!

Well, (other than “Rajib”) I have often been called “Raj” or “Roy” or sometimes even “Hey You!”. Now I have a new sobriquet!

I kinda like it.

It is a pity my motorbike is red no more!