It was a rather successful business dinner. Buoyed with the outcome, I walked into the hotel a little brimming with energy, if I may put it that way. Which was good since I still had a lot of emails to catch up on. Having summarily disposed of the suitcase in the room, I grabbed my laptop and strolled towards the Concierge Lounge in the one full service Marriott that exists in this city (and I take wide latitude in calling it a city) called Dayton in the middle of the vast plains of Ohio.

It was late at night. I was one of a few in the lounge upstairs. And, of course, there was the lady who tended to the lounge.

Emails or a human being? Tough choice. Not really. Human being, it was. A quick night cap was poured, the laptop was firmly closed and the conversations flowed..

“I did not catch your name”, started I.
“I am Diana. Diana Sprowl. Can I get you something”.
“No I am good. Are you from around here?”
“Yes. My dad moved here…” In those few seconds, I realized that I was going to have a great time. First, she seemed to be of a very positive demeanor. She was constantly smiling and spoke with a voice like she was at peace with the world. In spite of meeting many many customers like me every day, the vigor in her conversation with me was self-evident.

We sat down and chatted and I unraveled an incredible history of how she and I got put in the same place at the same time. You know my history. Here is hers…

Her grandfather was from Ireland. He immigrated to Cincinnati. “Why Cincy, of all places?”, I rudely interrupted her. Turns out he was always interested in farming and he became a dairy farmer in Cincy area. Her dad aspired to be in the army. Unfortunately, the doctors had to take a couple of inches of his right leg bone out for a particular condition. I had a hearty laugh as Diana rolled her eyes and told me “You know how dads are. He always preserved his bones and screws and all that in a bottle!”. Her dad, then moved to Dayton.

As she talked about her mom, a picture of a very gritty person came to the fore. Like so many American families of those days, her mom worked in a local industry and then, unfortunately lost most of her right arm in an industrial accident. But as Diana explained, she adapted faster than anybody could. Diana explained how her mom would change her granddaughter’s (Diana’s daughter) diapers with one and a half arm faster and more efficiently than most people. In fact, growing up watching her mom, Diana has a instinct of dealing with things that require both hands often as if she does not have one. Involuntarily, she follows the motor movement that she visually got used to watching her mom!

Diana grew up as one of four siblings. And she has three kids of her own. And 8 grandkids. The most poignant of all the stories was that of her youngest daughter. She met somebody who was one of the few to escape the Rwandan genocide and settled in this country. They eventually got married and had five kids. Diana, fished out a picture of the family from her phone and proudly shoed it to me. Out of a sense of duty towards his religion and the African continent, the gentleman often went to different countries in Africa as a missionary to spread the message of peace and love. And less than a year back, while he was in Kenya, he and the rest of the team vanished. She said that in spite of the best efforts from this country, her daughter is starting to lose hope.

For all that, Diana seemed to be very much at peace with herself and cheery of disposition. I asked her – “You seem to be very content with yourself. What were you doing before this?”. And that is when I found out that she was to be a massage therapist at one time. And a yoga teacher around another time. And then somehow, we got on to the topic of international travel. Apparently the one time she (and her sister) was going to visit a foreign country – Trinidad – there was an attempted hijacking on her plane (I think she said New York airport). And that put paid to her aspirations for international travel.

I finally blurted out “How old are you? If you do not mind me asking you”.
Her answer later, I thoughtfully said “Okay. I am fifty one. I will take some time to get to your age. Tell me something. What should I know now that you wish you knew when you are my age?”

She did not even blink her eyelids… “Love and live everyday like it is your last day”.

I have heard that vein of thought from a few people before. So, I pressed on … “And what else?”

This time she thought for a few seconds and said “Forgive often”.

By now, it was getting late and the lounge had to be closed. I reluctantly put an end to our conversation but not before I let her know that I just hope to grow up to have her cheerful outlook towards life. It takes a lot of grit to overcome so much and yet be able to put that priceless smile on. And that I cannot wait to get back to Dayton, OH.

The year was 1997. I was running a development team. Those start-up days, we often put the new entrants in Consulting Services team to test our software (which, if I may suggest, needed a lot of testing :-); did I mention I was running the development team? 🙂 ). One particular time, we were having a rather difficult time recreating a crash. And as you may know, without a core dump those days, we had very little ability to fix hard to trace bugs.

The plans was to have a full team of consulting services team keep hitting the same sequence of keys till somebody’s version crashed. That night, I was going around the building at the dead of night checking if anybody was still in the office. There was one, very young guy sitting in a corner and looked like he was trying to read something on his terminal.

“Hi, My name is Rajib. What are you doing so late at night?”, I introduced myself.
“I am Kwok Poon. I just joined in consulting services.”
“Very good. I am in development. So, what are you doing so late, though?”
“You are in development?”, I asked, ignoring my question.
“Yes”.
“What is scripting? Can you teach me how to write scripts?”

Now, mind you, this was way back in 1997. He was talking about Unix scripts.

For a moment, I scratched my head and asked “Sure. I am not the best. But I can teach you enough. Now or tomorrow?”.

“Can we do now?”

I glanced my watch. It was 1:30 AM. Sharmila was going to be totally asleep. What the heck. I sat down and for about a couple of hours gave hime some pointers on scripts and most importantly taught him “man” (the manual in Unix where you can get all the help 🙂 – which I was incessantly going to 🙂 ).

While he was picking up at lightning speed, I still was dog tired after a couple of hours. 
“Should we go now?”, I asked.

“You go ahead, I am going to try a little more”.

Next day, when I came to office, I remember meeting Willie – the head of consulting services and mentioning that there is a young Chinese employee in his group that might make a good name for himself. His intellectual curiosity and sharpness was something to be envious of. That is when Willie told me – “I know. He has automated most of the tests for your development folks. Somebody from your team taught him how to write Unix scripts”. I am not sure I ever told Willie who it was. (I was certainly afraid that a system crash by an errant script code might point back to me 🙂 )

But I absolutely narrated that story to Kwok as the experience I will always remember him by when I met him for breakfast last week in California. I was glad to know that he remembered that night too! I was good seeing him after so many years!!

He was so super sharp that he was soon shipped off to some of our toughest customers with very complex supply chain problems – first to Japan, then Korea, then Singapore, then Taiwan and then Hong Kong. (I might have the sequence of the last four countries wrong). I do remember meeting him once when I was visiting our Hong Kong office.

There was so much to catch up on when I met him this week. Being in the Bay area, it does not take much to guess that he has been with some very successful startups and continues with his entrepreneurial zeal. I found out that he married somebody in Taiwan that he had met in Dallas! That is a story for another day!

I certainly have had the fortune of meeting very sharp people in my life. Some very curious people. And some very humble people. Not too many put it in a package like Kwok has! Always great to have been touched by people like him in my life journey!

The last time I saw Sunita – my MBA classmate – was in March, 1991. I think she was running for an interview, all smartly and formally dressed up – during those last days of our MBA school when all the students were singlemindedly determined to ace their on-campus interviews.

I did not go back for the convocation or for the two get togethers that had been arranged by our group. That Sunita lived in San Francisco is something I had found out only a few years back. Even that, it was her husband – Ganapati – who was my senior from Engineering school that I had traced. And then remembered that he got married to Sunita.

I had about an hour between the customer meeting ending in San Fran and meeting one of our sales person that evening. That was enough for me to walk up to Wells Fargo building and call Sunita down to go for a cup of tea!!

She has remained pretty much the same way as I remember from 26 years back. Of course, now that she has a great job, she does not dress that formally any more 🙂

It was good to see an old classmate and catch up on her life journey!!!

It was towards the end of the last century. I was in a startup company that, in spite of me, was doing extremely well. Commensurate with a small company experiencing astronomical growth, we never had enough people and work days used to be excessively long. I distinctly remember wrapping up work around 1:30 am and be home around 2 am almost every single day. If not anything, I used to hang around till every developer left. Not that I was too much of a help in writing code – which explains how I became a development manager – but at least I was there for some moral support.

I also remember that one of my practices before heading to the parking lot was to check into all the rooms in the two floor building to see if anybody from any of the other teams were still working. Invariably – and I mean without any exception – there would be one guy sitting at this desk pounding away at the keyboard. He was always in his soccer clothes – including the cleats. And always had a soccer ball next to him. He was the development manager of another team and he liked his work as much as he liked soccer and would always put in a soccer game in the evening before coming back to office. And he played at a very highly competitive level.

During my business trip last week, one evening, when I finally caught up with that gentleman – Glen Jones, I was a little surprised to see him very visibly limping. Not knowing what had happened to him during the years that I had not seen him, I was, of course, a little worried. Sure enough, there was no need to be. He still plays soccer very regularly and had a temporary hip muscle pull from previous day’s game.

Over dinner, it was very fulfilling to catch up with Glen and his life journey. In fact, we remembered the day when Mark Whipple, Sharmila, he and myself had met one late night at a bar up there in the mountains outside Denver. (I was vacationing with my family much further out – but Sharmila and I had driven down to meet Glen and Mark – both of them used to live in the Evergreen area).

Glen had a very funny story for me. In those start up days, we used to have a very strict discipline around coding. If you ever broke the build (by checking in incompatible code before doing a system wide test locally) during the automated run any night, there would be a hangman noose in front of your door to shame you. Those days, we never thought anything more of it.

Later in life, Glen worked for a very large company. And let’s just say the developers were not exactly as disciplined. And Glen brought in the practice of hanging the hangman noose. Let me remind you – this was a very large company.

Soon, corporate HR was at his door giving him some stern lectures on sensitivities and all that. He told me about how he remembered distinctly about being pulled up by the HR lady.

“What did you do?”, I asked.
“What could I do? I just kept quiet”.
“Later in life did you folks in your team ever have a laugh over it?”
“No, but I got even with the corporate HR lady”.
“You got even with the HR lady? HOW????”

I almost snorted out my bourbon when he nonchalantly said “Oh! I married her”!!

It was a memorable evening!!

The word on the street was that she was somewhat of a strict teacher. When I first encountered her – in my very first class in second grade, I also realized that she was very tall and towered over little seven year olds like us.

She opened up this book – a small brown cover book called “Brighter Grammar”, as I recollect – and asked “What is grammar”? I raised my puny little hand up – still a little afraid of her. She looked at me and I blurted out “Grammar is the art of putting the right words in the right place”. I am sure you are impressed by my grasp of the language called English at that age. In reality, I had no idea what I just said.

Turns out that my dad had opened up that book before packing it in my bag the previous night and read the first page and that was how the book started. And he taught me those words right then and there. I did not even know what “art” meant, especially in this context. Although I think I knew what “word” and “place” meant.

Back to Mrs. Shastri – for that was what we called her…, she closed the book and asked me “Do you want a double promotion?”. If I did not know what “art” meant, there was no way in God’s green earth I would know what a “double promotion” meant. I was scared out of my wits by her question. Instinctively, I felt that if she had closed the book before talking to me, that could not be good any which way to Sunday. I just bleated out “No, ma’m”. And she proceeded on with the rest of the lesson. Which, of course, I have no recollection of. Because my dad never taught me anything beyond that first line.

When I came home, I complained to my dad that he did not teach me the right thing and he should stay away from my books. My teacher had threatened to give me a “double promotion”. Some hearty laughter from him and for good measure, complete confusion from my side later, I sorted out that I was going to be okay with Mrs. Shastri. I might have even hit a home run with her, for all you knew.

Just as I was starting to feel really great about myself, my father said – “You gave the right answer. You are not mature enough to go to third grade”. And there went all my feeling great about myself. Never quite figured out who was more strict – my dad or Mrs. Shastri.

Why am I telling you this story now? Because I just finished up telling this story to Mrs. Shastri herself. You see, after getting out of second grade – way back in 1974 – a full 43 years later, I actually heard her voice today and talked to her over the phone. I have not met her yet (so the picture here is taken from her Facebook public profile) but I certainly intend to do so at the earliest.

One of the reasons our paths never crossed much after 1974 was that in 1976 I left that school and in 1978 she relocated back to her home state. And yet, it was crazy to find out how close we have been later without knowing of each other’s presence. Apparently, she used to come to Dallas to visit her son – during a time period when I lived there with my family!!! For all you know, I might have even seen her in one of those Indian grocery stores!!

It was great catching up with her and learning about her journey in life. It was exciting to hear about the book she has written (and one more is on the way) and her research and teachings in alternate methods of healing.

Towards the end, I had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting something as I kept my conversation up with with her. And then it hit me suddenly – “Before I forget ma’m… A very happy birthday!!”

As I kept the phone down, a sense of great happiness descended upon me. The fact that I was finally able to say “Thank You” to somebody who influenced me at such a tender age was an unbelievably satisfying experience!

And this story will not be complete without me thanking Mrs. Bose – my third grade classroom teacher – without whole help, I would have never found out Mrs. Shastri’s whereabouts!

Back in my ninth grade, our class had five rows and four columns of desks. Each desk accommodated two students. I still distinctly remember where I sat. And more importantly, the guy who sat exactly three seats behind me. A fair guy – Uday Mukherjee being his name – he was very good in certain sports like ping pong (that was a big thing for us in school) and was very meritorious too.

But here is the thing. Somehow, he evaded my search for all our classmates for years. Very few people could give me pointers about his whereabouts. All we knew was that he had become a doctor. Many even suggested that he was in the US. That was the last thing possible. Usually, it is not difficult to find somebody in the US if you tried hard. And I would like to believe that I tried hard.

And yet, after 11 years of searching for him, I found out that he has been living in California all this time! The biggest irony is that in a previous job, I used to drive by his house all the time for our office visits!!

After having seen him last in March, 1983 – 34 years later, almost to the day, late at night last Wednesday, I showed up in front of his door!!!

That was a memorable meeting!! I thought I hit it off very well with his twins. Although, I have a nagging feeling that they are going to remember me as “that weird uncle” 🙂 Listening to Uday and I talking, you would not have believed how many years had gone by before we got to meet again. The big regret though is that I learnt I will not be able to see either of this parents any more. That is such a shame. Such nice people they were!

All in all, it was fantastic catching up with the 98th member of our 103-strong class. Three are no more. I still have to find out 2 more!! Maybe Uday can help me. He already got me connected to a friend from my twelfth grade!!

The good news was that she is a very early riser. And I was three hours behind Atlanta – so, I was going to be up at a God forsaken hour anyways. But that allowed me to catch up with Liz very early in the morning before our work day started.

Originally, I got to know Liz as a customer of ours. We had common interests in running, studying how the human mind works and all that. So, we kept up with each other even after we both left our respective jobs. Funny part is that the last time I met her was also in the very early hours of a winter morning – it was in Dallas though. I was there for some work. We both ran in a park in pretty dark conditions and then caught up over coffee. Both of us were experimenting with the Vibram (no support) shoes that time.

While it was a little over an hour that we got a chance to meet, I got a lot of life lessons from her. The biggest gain was to get some pointers about advanced mindfulness and yoga – specifically the connection of somatic fascia and yoga. I am still a neophyte in these areas – and she conducts camps in Italy every year. So, it was a little bit of drinking-out-of-the-fire-hose situation for me. But I did get some good recommendations on literature and I now need to read them up.

There were some candid discussions around Facebook itself – especially the role social media has started playing in to the concept of “ego”. She is certainly far more disciplined than me in terms of how she spends her time – and a lot more intentional in how she prioritizes her life. But the remarkable part is how she has kept herself well balanced. She avoids the extremes – none of the “no more of this”, “no more of that” and all that. She just moderates everything.

Which is a good thing. Because when the lady at the breakfast place came to take her orders, Liz started ordering all the healthy stuff.

“Oh! Come on! We are meeting after such a long time. You can let your hair down today”, I said as I proceeded to order my eggs, bread and hash browns!!

After a few seconds, she relented. “Ok, then”, she said and then looking at the waitress, she added “I will have mine with grits”.

Two decades of being in San Francisco but the Louisiana girl in her still comes out once in a while!!

Dropping by San Francisco for a few hours of customer meetings tends to be tricky for me when it comes to my personal time. First, I have way too many old colleagues, teammates and college friends in the Bay Area. I am always worried of upsetting somebody as I try to go thru my list of folks to meet with when I get time. Second, I am usually three hours ahead due to the time difference. When office meetings end, it is almost 9PM for me by Atlanta time and if there is a business dinner involved, I am pretty much toast by 8PM San Francisco time – which is 11 PM for me.

My flight was going to land at around 7:30PM. Strictly speaking, that was 30 minutes past my bed time. And this was after being cooped up in a plane for six hours going from Washington DC to San Fran. Ninety nine percent of me wanted to get to the hotel quickly and sleep. One percent, though, reminded me how I had promised Rajat-da that I will come and meet him sometime for sure.

Not quite sure if he would be free, I contacted him from the plane and asked how far his home was from the airport. His immediate answer was not to worry about such things and he would drive down to meet me. And that is how Rajat-da and I got together in a bar in Mountain View to catch up on our lost time over a drink and a quick dinner. The last time I had seen him was in 1987 – so there was three decades to catch up on.

We recollected our old times on the soccer field. Rajat-da was one of our ace players in the team. I was not so. I was the goal keeper of the team and my skills in goal keeping would make a neophyte to the game conclude that the goal keeper’s job was to escort the ball all the way into the net 🙂 But I did make it to the team and in fact Rajat-da and I had gone for a few out-of-college tournaments together too. In fact, we recollected how he had scored the solitary goal that put us past our arch rival in an Inter-IIT meet in Kharagpur on our captain Hasan’s birthday! If I remember correctly, I think Rajat-da also represented our college in table tennis (ping pong).

But that is not how I had met Raja-da to begin with. My first meeting with him was in his hostel room where I had gone to introduce myself – he was my assigned Student Counsellor. I remember he gathering the other three students he was assigned the Counsellor role of and took all of us to Taramani village outside the college campus wall (or as we called it then – Tarams for some “cutting chai” )

Spent quite some time getting to know Rajat-da’s family in India and US and his journey in his professional life. Living where he lives, no surprises that he has spent a lot of time with start ups. The differences in perspectives were great learning points for me on the work front.

And on the personal front, deciding to stay up and meet him – was the best call ever!!

Thanks to Joe (and I am going to tag his wife Pam on this since I know he stalks her FB account and reads my posts there 🙂 ), I was able to meet the very bright and young CTO of Amtrak – Sovan last evening. On the business front, we work with railway companies and I wanted to see how we might be able to help. But let’s not get into business here.

I got to know of Sovan’s journey from India straight to Minnesota and then how he settled here and recently has moved to DC area with his two very young kids. It was great to get the perspective of a CTO’s vision of challenges for a unique company like Amtrak. Since I knew Joe before Sovan knew him, I could highlight some of my past memories with Joe to him.

Joe and I worked in a previous job and he actually led all the Government sales in our business that time. We have both moved on ever since. But not before we spent a lot of time together on the road. And therefore, I got to know the personal life and the very funny side of Joe. And I made him repeat some of those stories last evening.

The most inspiring one I remember was his upbringing. His dad was – what he refers to as a “blue collar” worker living right outside Baltimore city. (Joe still lives there). But the story was how one of his elder brothers got into Duke and the first time he came home, talked about how Duke would take care of all expenses for financially disadvantaged families for the good students. From that day on, the fourth grader in Joe (I think he was in fourth grade) was maniacally focused on getting into Duke. As he told us, everything he did from that day on was totally about getting into Duke with full ride.

And he did get into Duke.
“How much was the cost those days?”, I asked
“All in, $20,000 per year”.
“And how much was your dad earning?”
“He retired with peak W-2 earnings of $19,500”.

WOW!!

He even talked about how they could not afford long distance phone calls those days and in his entire four year stay in Duke, he got exactly one call from his parents!!!

Little surprise then that Joe has been so successful in life. Under the gentle, funny self of Joe, there is some sheer Grit !! Speaking of which, we talked a lot on the topic of Grit.

I also told Sovan the story of Joe marrying somebody off. I think it was in the last year that we worked together. Joe went to online courses and became an ordained pastor. Yes! Apparently, you can do that. Of course, that Joe would be an ordained pastor – that too thanks to the internet was very funny to me. But I did ask him – “Okay. You are a pastor. But to marry somebody off, you need stuff – you know certificates, seals and so on”.

“Oh! They send you a starter kit”, he had said.

“Starter kit????” I remember taking a few minutes getting myself off the floor. I guess they sent two certificates and all that to give a kickstart to his new career. Seriously though, he has married off four couples. I believe he is headed to Europe to marry off the next one.

Another marvelous thing about Joe is his ten year volunteering in prisons to wean people off recidivism and violence thru faith based teachings.

Again, these kind of meetings always seem short. But there was somebody else from my office waiting for me at the bar in the same restaurant to work on some financial matters.

So, I had to say bye. But I can’t wait to get back with Joe and Sovan again!!!