This week, as you saw from my previous posts, I was in Sheboygan for a few days for our partners’ meet. On Monday evening – the night before the event was to start – I found myself with Julio thinking about what to do about dinner. The resort we were in was beautiful but eating there meant I was going to be interrupted all the time by the guests. Speaking of going out, this was Sheboygan we were talking about. Not too many choices.

Suddenly, I remembered about Blind Horse. Remember Yui – the girl who threw a dart in Japan and landed up in Kenosha? (Search for “Kenosha” in www.rajibroy.com). Well, I knew she did not work there any more but it was nevertheless a great place to eat. So Julio and I went for a fifteen minute drive to get to that place.

We were the only guests there. This was pretty late and of course, this was Sheboygan we were talking about. We sat at the bar to have dinner. I started telling Julio the story of Yui when our bartender overheard me and let us know that she had met Yui once when she joined the place.

After some chit chat between Julio and myself, I figured it would be good to know the new person too.

“What is your name?”
“Paula.”
One of the common ways for me to start a conversation for me is to find out where the person is from.
“That dark hair, you have… you are not from this part of the country are you? What is your lineage?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
For a moment I was wondering if she was trying to brush off an unwelcome intruder in her private life? No. She stood there smiling at us waiting for the next question!! (Actually, she is one of the most cheerful persons I have ever seen. Very witty, very smart and always smiling).

But it turns out Paula has very little idea about her biological parents. She was found in Milwaukee as a baby and then eventually adopted by a couple in Wisconsin. As you probably know by now, I think the world of parents that adopt.

“Tell me about your adoptive parents”.
I found out that they are as wonderful as I was thinking they would be. After adopting Paula, they adopted another child – her brother who is three years younger to her. He, as it turns out, is married to a lady who herself is adopted!! You want to guess from which country? India!!!

By now, Julio was into the conversation as much as I was. We were really intrigued by her life story. She has a daughter of 9 years. And she is a single mom.

That has to be a lot of hard work, I figured.
“How many jobs do you have?”
“Two”.

“Okay. Tell me what do you want to be when you grow up?”
She laughed at the concept that she has not grown up yet. But I was inspired by her answer. She wanted to go back to college and finish it. Apparently, she worked to earn thru her high school, went to college but dropped out after one year. Now she is waiting for her daughter to grow up a little and then she wants to go back to college.

“When you have a lot of money, what would you do with it?”, I asked her.
“Visit places.”
And it is then that she told us something – she has never been on a plane!! Of course, she is telling this to somebody who is on a plane literally every other day and is in a company that owns and flies planes!!!

Once again, I realized how lucky in life I have been.

But you always want the other person to have lots of luck too. So, here it is to you – Paula – go back to that college, get a degree and hopefully someday you will fly planes and see places that you have always wanted to see.

What do you know? Maybe Julio and I will hitch a hike in your plane!!!

For the rest of you, if you are in Wisconsin anytime and is in the mood for a mean Sazerac or a Manhattan, look up Paula Habeck at the Blind Horse.

The flight from Chicago was to leave at 6:45 pm. I had thirty minutes at hand and I was casually strolling along the sprawling airport just observing people. It was not normal for me to be on the road on a Friday evening and I had switched myself off from work. I had only a backpack with me and I was planning the reach the gate around 6:30 and be one of the last persons to get in.

As I casually shuffled towards my gate, suddenly a gentleman asked me “Are you from Illinois?”. I looked towards him and realized he was one of those folks that you will find at an airport often selling from a kiosk. In Atlanta, I have seen a few of them trying to sell Delta Amex cards. I assumed he was selling American Airlines credit cards. Usually, I would give a polite “Sorry, but I have enough cards” and move on. This time, I stopped and told him “No”. He asked me where I lived and I said Atlanta.

“You are the only person today who is not running to their flight. Everybody is in a hurry to get to their flight on a Friday evening”, he said.

“Yeah, I have a few minutes at hand. Anyways, there is going to be a crowd at the gate”, I said.

We said Bye to each other and I started walking to the gate again.

It was at that point I started getting some pangs of regret. He was a very nice guy, Why did he talk to me? He did not try selling anything to me. What was he selling anyways? I had a lot of questions. Halfway to the gate, I looked back and then looked at the watch. I had no chance of going back and talking to him again.

I guess Lady Luck was with me today. Upon reaching my gate, I noticed that my flight was delayed to 7:02. Seventeen extra minutes. I figured that was a sign. I walked back to the gentleman and his kiosk. He was busy doing something in his kiosk when I walked up to him and said “My flight is delayed. Would you have some time to spare for me?”.

And that is how we struck up a friendship. Found out that Doug is from Chicago and has spent all his life in a southern suburb of Chicago. He is between jobs and is doing this to bridge him through. Before this, he was in graphics printing. Very soft spoken, he came across as a very nice person.

I also realized that he was not selling credit cards. He was actually trying to convert customers to move to NRG – an energy company. I did the math quickly. Once he realized I was from Atlanta, I was not a potential customer for him. (NRG is not there in Atlanta). So, he had remarked about my apparent lack of hurriedness instead of trying to sell me NRG.

I was intrigued how effective was that method of selling that product.

“So, how many customers do you get in a day?”.

“Ten on a good day, two to three on a bad day”. That surprised me quite a bit.

It was at that point we talked about his previous job and how this is a temporary thing for him till he lands on his feet firmly again.

“Why did you come back to talk to me?”, he suddenly asked.

“Oh! I like making new friends. And I thought you were nice to me and I did not get to know you that time”.

“You are a very nice person too. I can see you are not from Chicago”

“Why?”, I asked half amused.

“Chicago people are very rude.”, he said, somewhat surprising me.

“No.”

“Yes, they are rude”.

And then he went on to explain the worst part of his job. “I hate the way people treat my like ####. You will be amazed how people will show me the hand and walk away. I know they are in a hurry. But why treat me like I am below them? I am just trying to do my job”.

I was not sure what to say. “I am sorry to hear that”, is all I could come up with. And a couple of exchanges later, I told him I had better gotten back to my plane. And managed to get a passerby to take a picture of us.

“I hope to meet you down the road again”, I said, as I waved him good bye for the second time.

As I slowly started my walk back to the gate, my mind flashed back to the numerous times I would be irritated by the sight of those credit card hawking folks at Atlanta airport and do everything to avoid eye contact. Even pretend to be on a call.

“I am just trying to do my job”…. those words of Doug kept coming back to haunt me. I realized that out of my fear of having to deal with an uncomfortable situation, how I have fallen terribly short in acknowledging another person as a human being just trying to earn a livelihood. Repeatedly so. How would I have felt if I was in their shoes?

In almost any encounters with a human being – any human being, we are not required to show grace and class. And that is the one good reason why I should be showing both. Every single time.

With very mixed feelings of regret in my own behavior but elated that I now have one more nice friend in my life, I finally walked into the plane. With the hope that I will be a better person next time when I see them.

And if any of you had nothing better to do than make  a new friend in Chicago O’Hare airport, swing by near Gate K7 or so and say Hi (and one from me too) to this gentleman in the picture. As he will tell you, his name is Douglas Smith.

Over the weekend, when we went to drop Natasha at NYU, I made some interesting friends – but then again, don’t I always? 🙂 One of our friends – Ishita – had opened up their apartment which is bang opposite the NYSE for us while they were in India. That was an incredible help – if not for anything else – just the logistics of storing stuff, getting stuff delivered and all that before we moved her in.

The first morning, I was up before everybody and decided to go out for a Starbucks. (I know, I am such a creature of habit !!). As I stepped out of the building, the building security guy opened the door for me. I just stopped there and made some polite chit chat and then told him that I am really not awake before I have my coffee – so I was going to get some coffee and then come back and talk to him.

I got my coffee and for good measure got him one too and started chatting with him. Was pretty fascinated by the whole conversation. My usual “So, where are you from?”, met with with an unexpected “Burkina Faso” reply. I had to stop for a second to get my geography right. That was the first time I had met anybody from Burkina Faso in my entire life!! My mind raced to remember what it was called before. After a few seconds, I told him – “You know, our geography teacher taught us about your country – but we remember your country as Upper Volta”. I distinctly remembered Mrs. Bhowmic teaching us about Ghana and its cocoa production and one of the neighboring countries called Upper Volta. I had asked her about Lower Volta and she had told me that there was no such country. That day, I had determined that Africa was a very confused continent. Albeit with some majestic elephants and lions 🙂 I was probably in eighth grade.

I found out that Brian Coulibaly (the young security guy we are talking about) had his entire family back in Burkina Faso and has been in America for a few years. He loves New York and will not move to any other place. An interesting side story to coffee – he told me coffee is good for me. He has been drinking since he was in single digits in age. Apparently, in western Africa, people start drinking coffee very early and is the equivalent of drinking tea in India or the Middle East. (Basically, you drink it many times but in much smaller amounts than we are used to in America).

He talked about their capital – Ouagadougou and their political system (apparently very corrupt with frequent coups and upheavals) and general economy (very poor country). I asked him about their President. He tried very hard but struggled to remember his name. We moved on to other topics about the country.

After spending a good 20 minutes I came back to our apartment. Later in the day, when we headed to NYU, he was gone.

The next morning though, as Niki and I stepped out to get some coffee (we were all up early – it was the move in day!!), he again opened the door for me and gave me the President’s name!! Apparently, he had to call up his mom that day to remind him of the name. I was suitably impressed. We got Nikita to take a picture of us.

I wish Natasha was there with me for her to realize – as great a day as it was going to be for her – how blessed she and we are in this country!!

P.S. I later Googled his country and found out an interesting factoid – a woman in his country bears 6 kids on an average!!!

I am often – and of late, increasingly – compared with my dad. Folks who know both of us mention how we look alike, our mannerisms are similar and we apparently, even talk the same way. But when somebody who I have not seen for 34 years, sees me down the street filled with a lot of people and immediately recognizes me simply by how I looked and walked from a distance, I have to believe that there is a lot of truth to what people say.

Yesterday, after all that driving and meetings and getting lost in the trails, it was getting late. But I really really wanted to meet this guy from my past. Unfortunately, I was at least forty minutes from where he was working and he was another forty minutes from his home. You know you were friends with somebody when they say – “Don’t worry. I will be there”. And that meant he had an hour and a half drive back home.

Not knowing how he would look – I had vague memories of Raja (Rajarshi) – I was looking around in the middle of all the boisterous crowds in Reston Towne Center on a Thursday evening – to see if I could spot him. Like I said, I had no need to worry. Even if he did not remember me, he remembered my dad.

The familiar “Bachchuda!” cry (incidentally, Bachchu is what my nickname was in Durgapur – actually still is – but nobody calls me by that name anymore) made me look to my sharp right and there he was – Raja – pretty much looking the same from so many years back. Not losing hair helps a lot!! And his first comment – after seeing me after 34 years – was “Ekabarey Roy-jethur moto”! (“Just like Roy Uncle”).

I was sixteen and he could not have been over ten way back in that February 1982 Saraswati pujo day when I had visited them for the last time. A few years back, we had left the neighborhood. But before leaving the neighborhood, we used to play soccer and cricket together – along with a few other kids from the neighborhood.

I had always wanted to meet him after I located him a year back. In spite of coming to the DC area so often, yesterday was the first time I got some time to meet him.

We told the bar lady that we were meeting after 34 years. She promptly took pictures of us. The rest of the evening, we drew up the neighborhood houses on a napkin and went house by house to see if we remembered everybody from that house and see if we knew where they all were. Many times I would fish out my iPhone, go to my blog and show him pictures of many of those people. In my “Intersection Point” series, I had met them much later, took pictures of and chronicled them in my blog.

The whole evening was like stitching together a rich tapestry of scattered memories from those days. We would recollect something – ask the other – do you remember that? do you remember this? and often would burst out laughing or loudly go – Yes, Yes Yes.

It was a good thing I had told the lady at the bar about our background. Instead of getting irritated every time we got boisterous with our laughter and Bengali, she would come over and take more candid pictures of us on our phones!!

Thank you Raja for taking the pains to drive that long to make it possible for me to meet you. Let’s see if we can pull off that picnic in the same spot from 1980 with all our neighborhood folks one last time in the next few years!!!

A couple of years back, Sourav – who went to seventh and eighth grade with me – had crossed the Canadian border with his family to spend a night with myself, my family and my inlaws when we were visiting Niagara Falls. He had become an instant hit with my inlaws with his traditional Bengali style “jomiye adda”.

He was in Atlanta for a couple of days and I had fixed to have dinner and drinks with him downtown. What he did not know is that I had been working on a surprise for him. There is another friend from our seventh and eighth days – Manbir (Manny) who now lives near Columbus, Georgia. I have met both of them only once after leaving school way back in the early eighties. I took a chance and it looked like Manbir might be able to make it this evening. I, however, kept it as a secret from Sourav.

The confusion started when I showed up at 7:45 at the bar that I had told both of them to come to. I went inside the bar but I could not find Manbir. Instead, i ran into Sourav. Imagine, my situation – I am on the phone with Manbir trying to pinpoint his location and Sourav is right in front of me and of course, I did not want him to get wind of it.

Just when this confusion was reigning supreme, a guy walks up to me saying “Isn’t that Rajib”? And I was like – “Abhijit”? Imagine the scene – Sourav standing in front of me wondering who they heck was I trying to locate in the hotel … Manbir talking to me on the phone that by now I had taken off my ears because I was completely bewildered that I was standing in front of a guy I went to Business school with and have never since 1991!!

Eventually, we sorted out everything. Manbir was in the wrong bar. Which was fixed quickly. Sourav was overjoyed to see him for the first time after 1980. Both of them were terrific athletes in our school and there were a lot of stories to remember. In between, I walked up to Abhijit (who was with his friend) to catch up with him too. Finally, before leaving, he came by where we were sitting. I had to ask the bar guy to take a picture of us.

And then we tried to locate some of our old school pictures. Believe it or not, in the lower pictures, the left one is Manbir and the right one has Sourav and me. Did I look nerdy or what?? 🙂

What a great evening it was though!!!

Way back in 1972 – I was barely a six year old, I recollect going to a neighbor’s house with my sister around lunch time. Cannot remember why – but I suspect we wanted to play with her son – Jayanta – that time all of four or five years old. I also recollect Jayanta not being there (he was in school) but Mrs Dey (that is the lady in question) gracefully kept me and my sister busy by playing with us. Eventually, her son came back from school – and he straightway started throwing up. Apparently, he had thrown up at school too. Mrs. Dey checked his lunch box (called tiffin box in India) and the food was found to be completely uneaten. Before even she could tend to him, her first reaction was to give the fresh orange from his box to me and my sister. And then as she turned her attention to her own son, my sister and myself made ourselves scarce. (We had a prized orange in our hand, mind you).

She left our neighborhood soon thereafter, but my entire life, I have always remembered her for her grace.

Much later in life, I got to know her again. We got brought together mostly because her son and I studied in the same set of schools – from my fifth grade – all the way to engineering college after which he left for US and I decided to stay back in India. (I know, eventually my plans had to be changed. You can blame Citibank for that 🙂 ) But going back to her, over time I did visit her house later, and I recollect that Uncle (Mr. Dey) was always busy going out to play cards (he was a much accomplished Bridge player) but she would patiently sit me down and have all the time to listen to all the blabbering I had to do when I was young.

Much much later again, I had found out that she was visiting her son in Boston and I had made some time from my work related trip – barely an hour – to go see her. And then, again, it became very sparse connection, if any at all.

Finally, she came to stay for some time with her son (who recently has moved to Atlanta). I did go see her and we went out for dinner after she came over. But this was with (and I am not complaining) the whole family.

However, this week, I was able to corner her one on one for over three hours sitting outside in a restaurant very close to her son’s house. That was one of my best times ever. Just having that connection and trust level from having played under her supervision was enough to open up much more than I can even dream of opening up to any other adults (frankly, even friends).

There were way too many things we talked about. But here is a real funny thing – I was in touch with a old colleague of hers (I visited that lady in 2014) that she had been looking for for some time and she was in touch with a kids I used to play with that I have been looking for 15 years!! We had an even barter of phone numbers!! She also reminded me of an event that I have only a blurry memory of. My dad had organized a carrom competition in the neighborhood and the graceful Mrs. Dey was to give out the awards. You want to guess who won the competition? Mr. Dey!!!

There are not too many adults of that age group who can make me feel that comfortable around them as she can and consistently has. I am awkward to begin with. But she has a way of making me feel at ease to open up.

I can’t believe that I started my life in a very small town – way back in India – literally at the edges of the town (only two more streets separated us from the cemetery at the outskirts of the town) – just a few steps from this lady and many a year later, almost on the other end of world, we are again so close in the same city. (although she pops in and out of US and India).

Here’s to a few more of those three hour sessions!!