So, there I was … in Virgin Atlantic Lounge after a fairly hectic 36 hours, all ready to jump the pond back when I got a message from Delta that the flight is boarding. That could not be true. The flight was two hours later. While on a call with somebody in India, I started walking to the entrance of the lounge where the display for flight information was.

Turns out Delta meant to say that a gate as been assigned. The flight would not be ready to board for quite some time.

But for that mistake from Delta, I would not have walked to the display boards and would not have heard somebody calling my name out! Turned around and there was Utsav!! We had started working together when I moved to Atlanta in 2007.

Coming to think of it, that erroneous message and the fact that his flight to JFK was delayed for three hours is what made both of us get to the display boards to check status.

He was on his way back from India. I was heading home from London. He was going to JFK and I was going to Atlanta. A message in error. A delayed flight.

Equals two old friends get to meet!!

Serendipity is such a beautiful thing!

My hostel mate from Engineering days was visiting Atlanta. I am going back 38 years!! Had a great evening with him discussing life, our journey into USA, bringing up kids in a country we were not born in… Somewhere we started discussing about why organizations have systemic failures too!

… you can, without fear or favor, blame this gentleman!! Him and Michele Baker!!

Stephen and I go back almost 10 years when he was a pilot in the company I worked in. I remember his love for flying. Has been doing it for 41 years. When I had gone to our Alaska office for a business review, Stephen had taken me up in the air and showed me a bit of Alaska.

So, when I found out that he was in town for some training, I had to find some time to sit with him. You see, Stephen is one of those rare folks whose intellectual curiosity is boundless. Of course, we spoke a lot about airplanes. The mechanisms of how the smaller planes fly and what are the key skillsets required.

But we talked about things that you would not think you would discuss with a pilot. We talked about motorcycles and we talked about boats. We talked about Bayesian probabilities and generative AIs. One of the more interesting arguments we got into was whether with quantum computing we can fairly accurately predict how any human being will think or decide on a particular problem given enough data on how the same person has thought or decided before.

It was a bit of an unfinished debate. I feel this need to go to Alaska and spend a day with him to finish off our discussion. And maybe go up in the air in his personal plane.

Something tells me the next crazy idea is starting to germinate!!

In a stroke of serendipity, within about a few hours, had drinks/lunch with colleagues from three different jobs from the past – i2, Equifax and Riverside!!

For my first office trip after quite some time, covering two cities in two days, you would think I have had enough intersection points already. Except that there was one more left.

A few months ago, Tej had let me know that he would be coming from Dubai to Boston to drop his son in Boston College. I was not expecting to travel there (I had not yet contemplated on getting back to work). But I made a note on my calendar that he would be in the USA – Boston, to be precise.

As a background, Tej and I lived next door to each other in our dorm during our MBA days – 1989 thru 1991. He was Room 1307 and I was 1308. All our contacts subsequently were thru phone calls – usually in January, on his birthday.

After making my travel arrangements last week, while putting my flight details down in my calendar, I came across my notes. I was so glad that I had jotted it down. A few Whatsapp messages later, I realized that he was actually flying in on Friday late night. I was leaving town early morning the next day. No worries, I told him. I would wait for him in his hotel lobby and we could meet for 15-20 minutes since he was bound to be very tired.

Sure enough, at around 9PM, good old Tej walked up to the check in counter with his suitcase!!

As promised, we spent about half an hour together and resolved to spend more time the next time!!

One of these two close friends of the yesteryears meeting after 34 years… or I, for making it so!!

The last time you would have seen these three together would have been in Chennai – circa 1989. Except that the fourth chair would not have been empty. Partha Roy would have been sitting there.

The two girls would have been talking loudly. Both would be laughing heartily. I would be trying to cut in with some dad jokes (then called “PJ”s – stood for Poor Jokes). And Partha would quietly sit there sipping his soft drink and then once in a whole bring the roof down with his loud guffaws. Lata would be speaking with a great command of the language English and Kiran would be talking of something disapprovingly with a liberal dose of Hindi words in her English.

34 years later… nothing has changed. At all!! Other than Partha, who was conspicuous by his absence, everything felt the same.

I was in Boston for work. Stayed in the Marriott in Cambridge that I used to stay in the late 90s when we had an office next door. Lata works in Cambridge and Kiran lives in Cambridge. A few phone calls here and there – and there we were!!

Two highlights…
Lata refused to believe that I had once driven her and her roommate – together with my friend Aditya – from New York to DC and we had stayed with somebody she knew in DC. I gave her a lot of details of the trip – but she would have nothing of it. Finally, I had to call Aditya and get him to send us a couple of pictures (he was and still is an avid photographer) from that trip. I showed them to her. Her first reaction? “That is me? Send it to me – I want to show my son this picture”.

Second was, Kiran and I got a class on “Gene 101” from Lata. I finally have the answers to a lot of questions about genes, DNA, genomes, chromosomes etc etc that I had all these days. Learnt about “junk genes” for the first time. Did you know about them?

“Rajib, we have just relocated to New York,” said the message from Vinayak – somebody with whom I went to IIM Ahmedabad together for our MBA. In fact we were in the same Section (Section C) in the first year. But that is where our similarities ended.

He was smart as heck. A very pleasant person to talk to and modest by the gobs. He was also very smart with finance courses and computer classes. In fact, he was so good, his nickname in campus was “God”.

I do not participate in any WhatsApp groups. So, I miss out on all the updates people post there. However, I do try to keep up individually with all of those whose birthdays I am aware of. Therefore, I was real glad that Vinayak proactively let me know that he has moved from India to the USA.

“Oh! Turns out I will be in New York in a couple of days too!”

We planned to meet early morning at 6:45 at Columbus Circle before my office meetings got going. Finished my run in Central Park and as I emerged from out of the park into the Circle, there he was! Waiting for me, looking the other way.

We took a walk in the park – remembering a lot of our days and friends from our MBA days. The last time we met was in 1991. About 32 years back!! A street side coffee and breakfast later, we split.

It was so rewarding to meet Vinayak and learn about his life journey. Hope to come to New York more often and spend more time with him in the near future.