This has been a tough week for my and my team mates at work. I personally have been bouncing off from airport to airport, city to city, meetings to meetings. Yet, among those strenuous times, I always seem to bump into some memorable moments.

I was in Houston for a quick meeting. I needed to get myself to the northwest as soon as possible. So, as you can imagine, it was not very amusing for me when United let me know that my flight was delayed over three hours. I would reach Portland around three in the morning – six o’clock for me by Atlanta time. I would be in no shape to have any meaningful discussions. Long story short, I changed my plans to head out to Salt Lake City, sleep there for a few hours and then head out to Portland.

Meanwhile in Houston, that meant I had a little time in hand. I knew exactly where to go. You see, I was aware that my friend from elementary school – first grade to fourth grade – who is a renowned doctor in London (yeah yeah yeah, you have a legitimate question – “all your friends seem to have made something about themselves, what happened to you Rajib?”, can we move on, now? ) also is deep into Bengali cultural stuff and was in Houston for the North American Bengali something (it is called NABC) to perform in a drama. She is one of those from my class who was always blessed with multiple talents. This, by the way, is an event where all the Bengalis from all over North America swoop down for a couple of days. To be able to get any stage time, you have to be top notch. To come all the way from London to perform, you have to be really passionate. And she is both.

A couple of wrong addresses later, I found myself sitting at a lobby of a hotel near the airport. Eventually Mausumi (I just realized, I had never mentioned her name) showed up too. Beautiful and graceful as ever, she picked up our conversations from almost where we had left it last. Presently, her husband and son (I have met them before) showed up too. It was such a great fortune for me to see the Basu family again.

At some point, she mentioned that they have another couple traveling with them. I am always up for making new friends. So, I mentioned I would love to meet them. Eventually, a lovely couple strolled in. And Mausumi introduced me to the gentleman as “Ani” and his wife who has the same name as my friend. As socially awkward as I am, I first started talking to the lady thinking she was Masumi’s friend’s daughter 🙁 We exchanged pleasantries. But I was distracted. My mind was racing – “He is from Birmingham – the UK version, not the Alabama version – and his name is Ani. How do I know him?”. Then he took his hat off. And I blurted out “Aniruddha-da na?” (are you not Aniruddha?).

As difficult as it might be for you to believe, this guy and I went in the same bus to middle and part of high school together. In fact, he got up in the bus from the stop right after my stop. He was one year senior to me but I remember every detail of him – including one day the bus going in front of his house like every other day but he was just standing at the gate of his house. He had just recovered from some ailment (was it jaundice???) and he was still not cleared to go to school.

As coincidences go, after he had left that home, my parents move to a home literally two houses beyond his and lived there for seventeen years!! Last I saw him was in 1982. And today he was the “a friend of ours I would like you to meet”, as Mausumi put it.

What is the chance I get to see my elementary school friend and my senior and bus-mate from middle school – all in India – at the same time? Far from their country, UK!! In a country called USA about which we had pretty much zero knowledge when we got to know each other first?

You can only imagine how many old friends we caught up on!!! All this happened in 40 minutes. I had to get to the airport soon. What a memorable 40 minutes!! Sometimes I wonder why can’t these moments be hours and hours. And then I remind myself that my other alternate was to have 0 minutes. I am good.

Here I am – at Salt Lake City airport, near midnight local time, waiting for my hotel shuttle to show up. But I have all the time in the world now!!!

I had not seen Atanu and Mamtha for over a decade. We lived a couple of minutes of walk away from each other in Dallas. Atanu and I worked in the same team in the same company for quite some time too! I am really glad that they could make some time during their short visit to Atlanta right before we left Atlanta for a couple of days…

Yesterday, I had a lot of work stuff to get done. Instead of staying in office when everybody was gone, i just went to a bar half way between office and home with the intent to go thru all the numbers and documents over a glass of wine. (Usually, I try not to bring work home; I will stay out, finish it and then get home).

The bar was pretty empty. I walked to the corner most spot in the bar to sit down. It was rather inconvenient if you were going to watch a game on the TV or get the bartender’s attention – but I just needed a glass of wine and space to spread out my papers. So, it suited me just fine. As I sat down at the last seat, I noticed a plate (like a name plate) nailed to the wood – it said “Reserved for Ump Daddy”. That was a little intriguing. So I asked the bartender about it. He mentioned that Ump Daddy is their most regular customer. In return for his business, they did it to honor him. I asked him if I should move to the next chair. “Naah! He is cool”, came the reply.

With that, I started pulling out my papers. I must have been deep in all those document because, half an hour later, when I lifted my head, I saw that the whole bar had filled up. By the way, not sure if this happens to you – white noise by complete strangers lets me concentrate very well. I can tune them out. If if it is known people however, I cannot do that. My ear, invariably becomes curious to understand the conversations going on.

In any case, I also noticed there was a gentleman sitting next to me. Out of impulse, I asked him “Are you Ump Daddy?”. He confirmed that he was!! I told him I heard about the story and his nameplate and asked if he would rather we switch. He just laughed it away and told me not to work too hard. As is my wont, I started to find out what he does. Turns out he is in IT and has actually worked for our city (Milton) at some point in his career. He knew our neighbor Bill extremely well. In fact, he went on to tell me a very funny story of how he got the moniker “Ump Daddy” when he moved from North Carolina to this part of the country. We marveled that I would randomly walk into a bar twenty miles away from home and the first guy I would meet is somebody who knows my neighbor very well!!

After a few minutes, he got busy with other regulars in the bar and I went back to my work. When I was done and started to wrap up, we exchanged our contacts and cards to keep in touch and may be we might actually have opportunities for him some day at our company.

His first words after glancing at the card were – “Oh! You guys did Lidar for us last year”. You can only imagine how much I was taken aback! “You know what Lidar is???”. Turns out he works for a local government now for whom we did a geospatial project some time back!!! I immediately remembered the sales guy who had told me about a project in that particular area once.

So, all this time, I was actually sitting right next to and chatting with a customer!! Who knew? !!

My run by the lake over, I said goodbye to Natasha and headed straight to meet somebody from the past. On the way, I located a La Fitness thru Google maps and headed there to take a shower and change. Drying up with paper towel (since I was not carrying a towel with me) was taking a lot more time than I was hoping. Or perhaps I was just getting impatient to meet Rajeev Saxena.

We used to live next door to each other in Bombay and we worked in the same company for about a year or so. I saw him last in 1993 when I left for US. Finally, I had traced him down to Chicago and got a couple of hours opened up before I had to drive up to Milwaukee.

It was a pity I had to drive up to Milwaukee because we could have easily spent another few hours talking. And this was already after overstaying my scheduled meeting by over an hour and a half. It is not often I come across people who have similar perspective towards life as I do. I am not saying the perspective is great or right – in fact, I routinely get called quirky by all and sundry – but it is always exciting to meet people with similar outlook as yours. What is more is that he has put into practice the philosophies we share much more than I have been able to.

A big chunk of our evening was spent discussing how to ensure you control money and not let money control you, the slipperiness of financial goals (they keep moving), the importance of time and relationships, the realization that the bank balance we will have when we die is the amount we did not have to work, that nobody has ever died regretting they should have worked a little more, the importance of taking “timeouts” from work life, the common fallacy in thinking that one cannot “afford” to do so and all that.

Speaking of time, we talked about a topic that has interested me for the last year. It is around minimalizing my life. Especially things I own. Somewhere a year back I started realizing that things have started owning me (maintenance was taking up a lot of my time). I started by drastically cutting down the number of clothes and shoes I wear. I was delighted to hear that Rajeev has had years of experience in this. I picked up a few valuable tips around how to simplify a few more things.

Eventually, we entered a little metaphysics zone and talked about how to create mindfulness within one self. We talked about meditation and the seemingly impossible task of constraining the mind to be in the present. We exchanged a few tips from our own past practices.

Like I said, I really wish I had a few more hours to spend with Rajeev. I loved his perspective towards life. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I think the same way too! So, I am biased 🙂 But more importantly, he has put to practice lot more than I have and I need to learn from him.

Last evening, Natasha and I arrived in Chicago and had the evening to ourselves since her summer camp check in was going to be today. I asked her if there was some friend she wanted to visit. She said, “not really”. I asked if she would want to visit the family of one of my friends. Surprisingly, she said “yes”. I was expecting her to say – “you go ahead, I will hang around in the hotel room”. After all, she had her phone and a free wifi connection 🙂

In any case, half an hour later we found ourselves in front a nice house in Chicago suburbia. Moment the house owner opened the door, I had flashbacks of days over thirty years back. For that is the last time I saw Ranajoy. One year junior to me, we studied in the same middle and high school. I saw him last when I left high school – his junior year.

His dad also was my brother in law’s (Sharmila’s brother’s) teacher. And I missed him by the whisker. He left Chicago a few hours before I showed up 🙁 I was aware that we lost Ranajoy’s mom a few months back. I still remember her evergreen smile. Unfortunately, I will not see her again 🙁

One evening was too little to catch up on our days in between. We gave as best a shot as we could. And this was while I was also getting to know his wife (Madhumita) and his son and daughter. It was absolutely a magical evening. After a couple of drinks at his house, we all went out for dinner. On top of all the memories, I also was gifted a CD of Ranajoy’s songs. (He is somewhat of a professional singer).

On our drive back, I asked Natasha – “You were quiet most of the time. Were you bored?”

“No”, she said. “Actually I don’t know how you keep up with people you have not met for thirty years but it was cool hearing the old stories”.

This is Natasha. Dad is something to be embarrassed about. Not find something cool in.

I need to get me some more of these evenings… 🙂

Like every other day, I called up my mom yesterday and was expecting to be the usual few minutes of chat before she went on with her household stuff. Instead, she was very excited to let me know that two of my friends had visited her and my dad in the afternoon.
“Friends? Who?”, I asked. I could not think of anybody immediately who would know their house in Kalyani to visit them.
“From St. Xavier’s School, Durgapur”
“Really?” That was even more confusing.
“One of them is called Happy”
In my mind, I could think of one Happy Ghosh who I have not met in 30 years and in any case he was not from that school. And the other Happy was the nickname of Gurdeep Singh. He is the highest level executive at Vizag Steel about 1500 kms away. What would he be doing in Kalyani? How would he know where my parents lived?

“Gurdeep?”
“Yes, Gurdeep”.
“Who was the other one?”, I asked.
“His name was…… ” and she had a senior moment for a second. But she quickly recovered – “He lives in Dubai”.
“Shirshendu”???? I asked.
“Yes, yes, Shirshendu was his name”.

At least that made a little more sense. Do you remember the story from http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=7598 ? If you recollect from that story, Shirshendu’s parents and sister live in Kalyani. I had met him for the first time in January of this year; in spite of having many many common friends, our paths had never crossed. The most inspiring part was to realize how he had gone to Dubai and used to sell books and fought his way to become a top executive in the construction business. It made sense that he was visiting his parents and decided to drop by my parents’ home. I am sure I had given him the rough location of my parents’ home.
But why Gurdeep?

In any case, for the next ten minutes my mom went on to wax eloquent on how she was so impressed with Shirshendu and Gurdeep. She could not say “Ki bhalo chheley duto” enough number of times. (“What wonderful boys” would be the rough translation). Then my dad took the phone – which is a rarity for him unless he has something specific to say.

“Your friend told me that moving to Kalyani from Durgapur was the right choice. I think he is right”. I was very tempted to say “Really? All those years the three (siblings) of us kept on impressing upon you to move and you would not agree – what was all that about? Even after moving, you still complain about leaving Durgapur. And now my friend says the same thing – and suddenly, you think that is the right decision. Okay, whatever.” 🙂 What I really said is “I think he is a smart guy”.

After finishing the call, I was wondering how to get hold of Shirshendu. I was not sure his Dubai number would work in Kalyani. However, in these days of Facebook, these are are but minor problems. In a few minutes, I got a message from Shirshendu on FB saying he and Gurdeep visited my parents. A couple of messages later, I called him up in his local India number.

I could not thank him enough for visiting my parents and cheering them up. My sister was also there and she was very excited too. I told him that my parents and my sister could not say enough good things about the two of them. But especially my dad seemed to be very energized by their trip.

I also called Gurdeep up and gave him the same message. I let him know that being in his professional life where he is, I could not believe he took the time to visit my parents. My parents have not been this happy in a long time.

One of the stories that came up was how my parents chuckled at Shirshendu’s shaved head (see picture) and noted that their elder son also does the same and they think this is becoming a popular style now. Seeing as much fun as my parents were having, my two friends just laughed it off.
And never mentioned the fact that Shirshendu lost his dad a few days back. In our part of the world, as part of the last rites of a parent passing away, the sons shave off their head. That is why
Shirshendu was in Kalyani. Gurdeep had dropped everything and gone to be by his friend’s side in such trying times.

It took me quite a few minutes after the phone calls to come to terms with myself to understand what kind of grace it takes for somebody to cremate his dad and then decide to go spread not sorrow but pure happiness to other dads nearby. What kind of a friend you have to be to take leave from a high flying post and instead fly to be with your friend to give him company and then extend further to join him is spreading the goodness around.

And what sensitivity to not let my parents’ mood down by telling them the truth behind the shaving of head. (btw, my parents still do not know).

My deepest regret? In spite of going to Kalyani every three months, I never got a chance to meet Shirshendu’s dad. Well, at least I am going to meet his mom next time I am there. Maybe I will take a few tips on how to recite poetry!! (See the story mentioned above).

I have always considered myself to be an end product of the inspiration and influence of numerous people that have crossed my path throughout my life. Shirshendu and Gurdeep, you two are way up on that list.