As I mentioned in a previous post, I had settled down at the ITC bar with my brother for an hour of gap time last evening. I walked in and asked if Ranjan and Mathew still worked there. I was told that they indeed were still in the hotel but had moved to other departments away from the bar. But they would call them up to come and visit me.

I started chatting with my brother and I believe I got distracted by a message or a call on my phone. I was looking at my phone when I felt that somebody had walked in right behind me. I was expecting it to be Ranjan but I did not lift my head up just in case it was actually some other customer simply going around me to the door.

But there was the hand on my shoulder and I looked up. It was not Ranjan or Mathew though. But it was somebody I knew. It was somebody I had worked with twenty years back in Dallas. He is not even a Bengali. Therefore, for the life of me I could not understand what was he doing in Kolkata.

“Rajasekhar Mallipeddi? What are you doing here?”

Turns out this was his first time … in fact first day in Kolkata. He was there on work. Apparently, when he landed in Kolkata airport, he even imagined running into me – since he was aware from my FB posts that I was in India. But here is the thing – I am usually never in Kolkata. I am in Kalyani or Durgapur. There is a bridge on the river Ganges that has broken down which has made any trip between Kalyani and Durgapur more onerous since I have to go thru Kolkata now – adding a couple of hours to the trip easily. Instead, I had decided to stop over in Kolkata for the night.

And as I said, this was his first in Kolkata in his whole life. Fancy meeting somebody I had worked with two decades back and who still lives in Dallas – a city I left a decade back – in a bar in Kolkata – half a world away!! Even he admitted – “Now, I believe that these kind of things do actually happen to you” 🙂

The three of us had a good time for half an hour generally catching up on our life and family and my brother giving some pointers on restaurants to try in Kolkata since Rajasekhar is a big foodie!!

Last evening, after meeting Mrs. Bose, my brother and I had about an hour in our hand before we were going to join his family for dinner. We went to the bar at ITC hotel to have a couple of glasses of wine and have some one on one brother time.

And of course, meet a couple of old friends that I had met at the bar last time I was there – probably a couple of years back. I had kept in touch with both Ranjan and Matthew ever since. We missed Anzee though.

It is always exhilarating to me to come back and catch up with folks who were complete strangers and then became friends just because our paths crossed coincidentally. Of course, that and my much-maigned-by-daughters habit of making friends with as many strangers as I can!!

The year was 1975. About twenty five very young kids from third grade were asked to line up and walk towards the school gate. Any distraction from class work was always welcome; so we merrily started walking in a line. What was more exciting was that Mrs. Shastri – the teacher who was leading us – took us straight out of the school gate and onto Mirabai road. About a hundred meters down that road, we took a sharp turn and entered the outer garden of a bungalow. That was the bungalow of Mrs. Chobi Bose.

My memory is very unclear around why we visited our home room teacher Mrs. Bose that day. But I do not recollect seeing her in class again after that. Nearly 42 years later, my brother and I marched up to her house in Kolkata last evening. The best backdrop to the story above that I could put together yesterday is something like this: Mrs. Bose had left the school in the middle of the year in somewhat of an unplanned fashion. In all likelihood, Mrs. Shastri had taken all of us – her students – to visit her since she had left suddenly.

You know how sometimes some small incidents get permanently etched in your mind for no apparent reason? Well, I let Mrs. Bose know how I was struck that day back in 1975, by how well decorated her living room was. I still remember where I sat in her living room and was suitably impressed by those square pillows that were lined up against the wall on their vertices along their diagonals with very colorful covers. Mrs. Bose had a hearty laugh at my recollection.

My brother and I had such a great time chatting with Mrs Bose and finding out about her family. As if getting to see her and talk to her after such a long time was not a reward unto itself, she was, on top of that, able to give me two leads to two more of my teachers that I had been looking for some time. My second grade class (home room) teacher – that same Mrs. Shastri and my tenth grade class teacher – Mrs. Biswas.

Like that day forty two years back, I was again struck last evening by how tastefully Mrs. Bose’s living room was done. Admittedly those square pillows sitting on their diagonal were gone 🙂 But Mrs. Bose was the same old lively person that I remember from the mid seventies.

That was a great evening spent with a teacher from my elementary school days!! I am glad I got to see her after so many days!!

As the car got off the highway and took a right turn into the dusty dirt road along the canal, I knew that either I was going to be terribly frustrated or another one of those multi-decade long searches was going to come to a successful end. If I had the right village name and if it was an unique name in Google maps, I was on the right path. The good news of Indian villages is that I can be within three villages’ distance from the right village and by asking about a “Nilu Mondol” and some vague history and I would still be able to find that person. On the other hand, if I was one more village away than that, I might as well have asked for a John Smith in an Indian village and I would have gotten the same stares.

Last time I played with Ranjit (“we called him Nilu”) was somewhere in 1979 or so. I think December of that year because after that we shifted to a different residence. After Moniruddin (who if you recollect, I managed to nail down at his home after a four decade long search), he was the guy I played with most. We spent a lot of time in each other’s house and his mom used to take care of all the young kids in the neighborhood whenever we needed some help.

There is a rather embarrassing incident that is seared in my mind. One of those days when I was playing, I had a big fight with Nilu. And let’s just say that I might have or might not have hit him with a stone. My ever helpful sister quickly ratted me out. My mom gave me a choice – I could either stay out and go hungry that day or walk up to Nilu’s house and say sorry to him in front of his parents.

You will be amazed how all those deep resolves of a eight year old to not heed to his parents can quickly melt away when it becomes lunch time!!

As the car winded down the dirt road, we asked the first tea stall if there was a “Nilu Mondol” nearby. I knew I had hit pay dirt when he asked us to keep going till the village came to an end. Which is what we were doing, when I thought I recognized somebody by the wayside on his bike.

“Ei, tui Nilu na?”. (“Hey, are you not Nilu?”), I asked rolling down the window of the car. A few minutes of confusion and elation later, we sorted it out. That was indeed the friend of mine who I had to march up to say sorry so many years earlier and he was coming back from the fields where he farms.

“Manju-didimonir chheley to?”. He reconfirmed that I was “Manju”-madam’s son. That being my mother. I had forgotten that he was her student in elementary school.

I had a whale of a time catching up with Nilu and his parents (who you can see in the picture). Nilu’s life took him in very different ways than most of the rest of my friends. While most of us started from some small village, moved to a small town (thanks to our parents) and then individually moved on to bigger cities, Nilu moved back to his village with his parents and went back to tilling the land.

You can see from the picture on the top how much fun I had him and his parents!!! And yes, I reminded him of that hitting him with the stone too!!!

Moments like these make me feel so incredibly blessed!!!

Last time I was in India, I simply ran out of time after meeting five of my school teachers. This time, I wanted to make sure I got to meet Mrs. Nita Banerjee. While she was not ever my home room teacher or subject teacher (she had substituted for our home teacher who had to be away from school for a couple of weeks), I had heard from my friends who had her as their home room teacher that she had enquired after me. I was a little intrigued about how she remembered me.

I was simply astounded how much she remembered about me when I met her today. Again, last time I saw her was in 1983. There is something about teachers. They see a new set of students every year and somehow they have an incredible ability to recollect a few things about vast majority of those students. It is something that has always marveled me.

I was delighted to see Mrs. Banerjee after such a long time. In a complete reversal of roles, today, I explained to her my philosophies in life – why I quit work after every so many years, why I put a high premium on human relationships, the book that Bronnie Ware wrote and so on. I had a great time discussing some of those topics that are very close to my heart.

We had a lot more discuss but it was time for me to leave. We promised to discuss these philosophies in more detail next time… perhaps when she comes to US to visit her son…

This trip, I have been focusing more time to meet friends from the school that I went to for eleventh and twelfth grades. This one though is about a friend that I studied with till my tenth grade.

Around noon today, I realized that I had about forty five minutes of free time and was wondering who would be my next victim to go and meet. Somehow, my mind went back to the conversation I had with Kunal on his last birthday where he freely accepted that he has great difficulty remembering most of our friends from school and therefore he almost always avoids going to any school get togethers. Realizing that I will probably never see him in any of the old batchmates’ meetings, I figured he might be a good target to surprise.

I had his house address with me – so finding his house was not a problem. His face was a sight when he opened the door and saw me. You could see the struggle in his visage. I asked “Chintey paarchhis?” (Do you recognize me?). I guess the way I asked and my shaved head did the magic!!

We sat down and chatted for quite some time. Certainly more time than I had thought I would. A big part of our conversation revolved around taking care of old parents. Both he and his wife are having to deal with the challenges of supporting single surviving parent who do not live close to them. For all the challenges I have with our parents, it did remind me how much of an advantage we have with my sister next door to my parents and my brother so close to them.

It was great catching up with Kunal after three decades and a half!! It was even greater getting to meet his wife Kakali and his two cute young daughters for the first time!!!

Strictly speaking, “PKM” was never my teacher in any class. He was the Physics professor in RE College and his fame as a teacher was pretty well known. I had approached him during my summer vacation in eleventh grade when I was home from my residential school with a couple of Resnick Halliday problems. I remember him taking me under his wings and had asked me to come a couple of times in the week at 3 PM.

I do not recollect the exact days of the weeks but I remember that he wanted me to come when there were no other students (I guess 3PM on a Durgapur summer day can be oppressively hot) and we used to sit down and keeping working on Physics problems. He was one of the first guys I had called up after the results of my final exams a year later were announced.

I also remember one more incident when I had gone to his college to greet him in 1986. He was leaving to take a class and just asked me to join him. So, there I was – following him into his class and then sat with the rest of the students. He finished the whole session as if there was nothing awry. And it was totally a practical joke he had played. Because half the students in the class were my classmates from tenth and twelfth grades. They were way too surprised to see me in the class and very curious to find out what had happened but dared not do anything lest “PKM” Sir got mad!!

At the end of the class, he took me back to his office and we caught up. But not before he laughed out and “Kirokom dilam bol” 🙂 🙂

I had made an attempt before to meet him. But he was visiting his daughter – and a friend of mine Anushree-di – in USA. I gave it another shot today. Fortunately, I was able to see him in his house today. We caught up on a lot of things including old Resnick Halliday problems!! I even reminded him of a billiards ball problem in rotational momentum that had taken us three days to crack and till date, I remember the answer to that problem – 5h/7. Don’t remember the full problem though.

He was impressed with me recollecting the problem enough that I felt like saying “Ami ki dilam bolun” 🙂

I was in Durgapur till my tenth grade and my dad worked in Durgapur Steel Plant. Recently, while talking to another friend, I had found out that an old classmate of mine from eleventh and twelfth grade in Narendrapur High School had become a big shot in the same place where my dad worked.

Since I was in Durgapur, I had to figure out if the big shot would still recognize me. Fortunately for me, that was not an issue with Kishore. Although, I have to say that he had done his homework and found out about my shaved head!!

Had a great time with Kishore – a friend who grew up in Agartala and now calls the same town his home that I used to call home once upon a time. We had a great time catching up on old friends. It was almost weird asking him and his wife – Chandrani’s opinion of Durgapur. Seems like we all agreed that it is a great town.

I also spent quite some time with their daughter Ankita. I was delighted to learn about her area of specialization – genetics and genomics.

I overstayed my scheduled time at Kishore’s house. We had a lot to catch up on since 1985 – which is when I saw him last! Plus I was marveled by his sense of humility.