You probably have heard me saying this often before – I am always struck by the difference in the attitude of people as they age between India and US. While generalization of any sort is fraught with danger – and I have certainly seen a few strong exceptions – but by and large, I tend to believe the following: compared to the country I live in (US), folks in the country where I was born and visit often (India), people, as they age tend to have a far less physically active life. And also seem to complain more. I would certainly put my parents in that category. But as I said, I run into exceptions too. I get inspired by those exceptions and that is why I write about them.

Such an encounter happened yesterday. I had a few hours left before I had to say bye to my parents and leave for the airport. I was aware that a gentleman that I wanted to meet for some time was going to be in Kalyani (small town where my parents live now) on that day. He is the father of a friend of mine in Atlanta – Nachiketa. I figured it would be good to go and say Hi to him. I was sure he would be thrilled to know that I live in the same place as his son does and we can talk about a few things. Also, my elder daughter and his youngest granddaughter are very close friends.

Before long, my brother and I were knocking on the door of what seemed to be the right address. There was no response. I pushed the door and it opened. I raised my voice to ask if anybody was inside. Soon, a very elderly gentleman came out. I introduced myself as his son’s friend from Atlanta and that I live in Kalyani too. Now, the last part was not correct at all but I was afraid that he would jump to all sorts of wrong conclusions when somebody comes unexpectedly from Atlanta saying that he knows his son. Eventually I corrected myself and let him know that my parents live in Kalyani but I personally have never done so.

In any case, I had bargained for half an hour of pleasantries – after all he was 86 years old and take leave of him. Turned out it went for over an hour and if I did not have a flight to catch, I could have sat for another hour. What had my jaw drop is that this gentleman – as I said 86 years old – takes the 5 o’clock local train every Sunday from Kolkata (where he lives) and comes to Kalyani where he has a house. He spends the day there and then next day goes to another town and teaches Post Graduate students in a college there. At 86 years old!! He travels in local trains (only people from Kolkata area will know what it is like to travel in crowded local trains)!! And teaches in a college!! I found out that he also spends Tuesdays and Fridays working at the National Library in Kolkata.

The Sundays that he spends in Kalyani – he tends to his large garden. He took us around his garden – with all sorts of flower plants, fruit trees and the like. It was an extensive set up he had. I asked him where did he get all this energy. He looked at me for some time and asked “What else would you expect one to do?”. That was the best answer ever. I was not sure I had an answer.

We went back inside from his garden for a cup of tea. He regaled me and my brother with stories of undivided India from the early twentieth century. (He was born in Bangladesh but moved to India). He had more stories about freedom fighters from those days than I had ever heard before. My brother and I had an absolutely fantastic time! Both of us agreed to meet him again – either in Kolkata or in Kalyani.

But to me he is the same old Atish Sarkar that I went to first grade with.
Woke up on Saturday morning in Durgapur with the exciting prospect that I would be able to see another first grade friend of mine – the twenty sixth one that I have dug up so far, if you are keeping count – after a very long time. We got separated after 1976 and that was almost forty years back. Not sure how, but a few years back, I was able to get his phone number and I was startled to find out that he remembered me immediately. I had made a promise to visit him some time in Raniganj. And Saturday was the day.

While it is never too late to meet your old friends, in one aspect I was too late. His dad passed away long time back. I owed him a lot of things but there was one I have been ever indebted to him. It was a seemingly innocuous act of getting me an application form from Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission school and encouraging me to sit for the entrance test. My dad and I were already set on me going to a different school where I had a guaranteed admission. I did give the entrance exam in this other school and I did get in. And against my dad’s wishes then (there is a rather juicy story behind this one – but I will leave it for later), I went to this school. And to this day, my dad and I agree that was the best decision for me. It opened up a lot of future opportunities for me.

Unfortunately for me though, I never got a chance to say Thanks to his dad. I did narrate that story to his mom and expressed my gratitude for uncle’s encouragement. I was lucky that his mom was there that day. She was visiting him and I did not expect to see her at all. It was absolutely wonderful to sit with her and talk about some of the incidents from forty years back.

One of the amusing story was a routine Atish and I had every “tiffin” period – which was basically the recess time when we had our snacks and kicked around some “kodomphool” pretending them to be soccer balls. I had this blue “tiffin” box and my mom would give me bread, banana and a boiled egg every day. He had a silver colored one and I do not recollect what all he brought – but he sure always had a “lobongolotika” (which is one of the best sweets you could find in Bengal). He loved eggs and I loved lobongolotikas. So, the first act during every “tiffin” period would be to exchange those two items. Much later in life, I realized how that must have reinforced the wrong message to both our moms seeing we had finished up all our food in the box 🙂 We had a great laugh sitting at his house and ruminating over such small incidents in front of three generations of women in his life – his mom, his wife and his daughter!!

Before long, I realized that one morning was going to be too little to go thru all our stories. He needed to get back to work. We promised to sit together as five people again and finish up the rest of the stories some day soon!

As in Delhi, many of the middle school friends in Durgapur put a gathering together for the evening that I was there. A few more did not make it, however the get together was graced by the presence if some of the spouses.

The whole camaraderie thing has remained undiminished thru the decades although the subjects of discussion have become more age appropriate. For example, for the first thirty minutes we found ourselves talking about blood pressure, sugar level, knees hurting, annual physicals and such till somebody called a time out declaring “Hey! We have become our dads”!

We all agreed and moved on to more interesting topics like work, family, school and such. But mostly, we picked on Prodipto 🙂 BTW, the last time I had seen Jyotishwar was in 1983!!

My best friend during middle and high school days was Avijit Bose. We have always kept up with each other and although geographically we kept getting separated – till we could not be separated any further – he is in Australia and I in US – we could not get ourselves even in the same hemisphere latitudinally or longitudinally – he is still the friend that I talk to most.

We became best friends primarily because we were nothing like each other. He was a funny, street smart person, I was socially awkward and frequently did not know how to end a joke. He was athletic. I was anything but. He wasn’t the biggest fan of math but loved biology and veered towards the medical line. I loved math and therefore never understood a subject like biology where apparently division means multiplication and consequently went the engineering route.

But we spent a lot of time together. And in each other’s house. My parents were particularly fond of Avijit. As was his parents of me. I was always a special guest at his house. Which left me in the precarious position of having to balance their trust in me and also supporting my best friend in all his mischievous misadventures that his parents would surely frown upon if they got to know of them. And that was the other difference between us – he was the mischievous one and I was the goody goody boy then!! (Not any more 🙂 )

I have a lot of memories that go back to those days about his mom and dad. His dad let me accompany him on the stage at a flute concert once (he was an accomplished flutist). His mom would make special snacks for me. She would even bribe me to see if I would spill the beans of any girls in his life. I would feign total innocence. It worked well with the goody goody boy image 🙂

His mom once took me to visit her sisters and her brother about 150 km away from where we lived. I continued to keep in touch with those relatives of Avijit for many years after that. Even when we were geographically separated, I used to write letters religiously to both him and his mom.

Over the years though it became more and more infrequent to see her. I would get updates but would see her less so. The wake up call came for me when, a few months back, I heard about Avijit’s dad passing away. You have no idea how much I have kicked myself for not getting to see him once before he died or even for that matter, simply calling him up. He would always encourage me to study hard and thanked me for being a good influence on his son (I never claimed it, but he thought so).

Anyways, I had told Avijit this year that I will be going to see his mom. And there I was today – after fighting the terrible crowd of Kolkata suburbs for two and a half hours just to navigate about 40 miles. She was certainly frail of health. She recently had a nasty fall and her locomotion is severely compromised. Add to that a host of other physical ailments. But you have to give it to her in terms of mental courage and strength. She refuses to accept help – does everything herself as much as she can and I never saw once losing that beautiful smile I remember her for.

It was bliss to sit with her and just be that middle school boy again! I have to go back and spend more time with her again soon!!!

Remember the story I had written in June, how a friend – Shirshendu – that I had heard about for a long time but had only met for the first time in January, that too in Dubai – had shown up at my dad’s place with another classmate of mine? Do you remember how my parents chuckled at his shaved head and was relieved to find out that I was not the only person sticking out? And how they never breathed a word about the fact that he had to shave his head because he had just lost his dad? And that is why he was visiting Kalyani? And he showed up to my parents’ house just to say Hi and spend some time with them?

Well you might remember also from another prior story when I first met Shirshendu that I found out he had gone to Dubai to sell books and then he worked himself up to be a top executive in a large construction company.

I knew exactly what to do when I stepped out my dad’s house this evening. I had to go meet Shirshendu’s mom. There is a song in Hindi that goes “jiski rachna itni sundar, woh kitna sundar hoga”. Which means, “If the creation is so beautiful, I wonder how beautiful the creator must be”! Google maps on my iPhone, accompanied by my sister and brother in law, I hit the road. For once Google maps met its match. The house numbering system in Kalyani was way too confusing for Google. I would not blame it. B-3/172 is next to B-3/18. But B-3/168 is not even within half a mile of B-3/172. Had to make a few phone calls to Shirshendu to get ourselves straightened out.

His mom is an amazing person. She reminded me a lot of Suparna’s dad (remember my friend whose mom has an advanced stage of Alzheimers but her eighty old dad was the most cheerful and inspiring person I had ever met?). In spite of all the recent difficulties she has gone thru – and she now lives by herself and does not go out for walks any more due to her knees – we did not hear her complain about one single thing during the whole hour we were there. I really wish I had taken my dad and mom with me 🙂

People say you are as old as you think you are. You have to see her to realize that physical ability and even life tragedies are but mere obstacles one needs to get past – not hobbled by. At the age of sixty five – when most people are thinking about the sunset years, she started learning recitation. And soon started performing on TV. In fact, right now, she is getting ready for an interview to be held in a nearby city.

She has a great group of friends, still exercises and does Yoga daily and even had toyed with the idea of whether she should learn how to sing. Now there is a person after my heart. Never say it is too late. Never follow the crowd. It is one life you will live. Live it on your terms.

I think I found out the answer to that Hindi song this evening!!

There are a few things you can always rely on – you know like death, taxes, irritating emails or calls from me reminding you that you are one year older, my blog posts showing up on FB with a “See More” link and such…. 🙂

You can add one more to that – and that is my classmates from my middle school having a get together in their city at the flimsiest excuse. So, when somebody like Deepak Bansal found out that I would be in Delhi for a few hours, the whole machinery went into action. Frantic calls were being made, stern reminders were coming from the likes of Amlan that his own flight would land at 9:15 and nobody were to leave the party before he showed up and such. You would think that some Carmel school classmates were coming to town. (there is an age old connection between St. Xavier’s and Carmel school in Durgapur – and they would probably understand the above sentiment). In reality, it was far more harmless – it was just me.

But thanks to the effort taken by Deepak, Amlan, Kushal, Sushil, Shounak, Biplob and Aniruddha on a working day, I found myself in a beer bar surrounded by some of my most memorable friends from a very impressionable age! Some of them I saw last about 32 years back. I was stunned how Sushil recollected the exact day he saw me last in 1984. I do not know what we were talking about – but we did laugh a lot. Something about “Past Imperfect, Future Tense”, as I reckon 🙂

My office meeting in Delhi had just gotten over. I was getting a little sleepy with the jetlag. But I also realized that I do not get a chance to visit Delhi much – this one was after more than ten years. There were enough old classmates to dig up.

Since the earlier I knew a person in my life, the more the priority I try to give to seek them out, I went as deep as first grade this time. There was this girl – Nishi Jain – who I was in the same class with – in first and second grade. Then we shifted to different sections and eventually different schools. She was the topper in our class. My lasting image of her was that one day when our school bus broke down and the second bus had to ply the two routes our school had. First the bus picked us up and then eventually picked her up. As we approached the bus stand, I could see all the other kids playing and throwing stuff. Nishi was standing under a tree, studying her school books. That lasting picture probably describes Nishi best. Very conscientious, very studious and you could not ever put her name and the word “mischief” ever together, even if you wanted to.

Anyways, a couple of phone calls and a Google map search later I realized that Delhi traffic was going to cost me an hour just to reach her place. Decided it was worth it. And I am certainly glad I did. It was absolutely thrilling to see Nishi after a long time. In fact, from her house, we went to visit her husband who has recently opened up a new plastic surgery clinic. Both of them have grown up to be very successful doctors!

All these days I had tried to keep up with Nishi – she had let me know that she was not a technology person. She had an email id but she never checked it. Somebody had opened up a FB account for her, but she has never logged in. Which is why, whenever I had to get in touch with her, I had to call her up.

Not any more! Now that her son has gone to the US to study last month, guess what? Anything I wanted from her (like contacts, old pictures etc), she was like “Oh! I will Whatsapp it to you”. I guess that is how she keeps in touch with her son these days. She even demanded that I open up a Whatsapp group for our elementary school batch. I was decidedly feeling Amish at her swift conversion to technology.

Somewhere, a picture flashed in my mind where Nishi, in her late forties, was standing under a tree in Delhi and studying up and down the Whatsapp manual. But I did not mention that to her 🙂

It was magical to see an old friend though!!!

That is pretty much the short version of what happened. The long version – or as some of my friends bored of my long blog stories would call them – the “See More” version of the story goes somewhat like this.

Somewhere late last year, Facebook suggested that I might know this lady called Anuradha Malik. The face looked familiar – I remember her being in my MBA school and I noticed that all our mutual friends were our classmates from that school. I was not particularly close to her or anything but we had talked a few times in campus. I was not sure that she would remember me. However, never one to lose a chance to make FB friends, I sent her a friend request.

In a couple of days, FB let me know that she had accepted my friend request. From FB, I found out a few more details e.g. she had two daughters just like me and that she lived in Delhi and such. I also noted her birthday down in my diary. Figured one more birthday call to make every year – but it would be a good way to keep up with an old classmate.

This Feb, I wished her a happy birthday on FB and asked her for her phone number. Which she was foolish enough to share 🙂 Anyways, I called her up to catch up and wish her again. A few minutes into the call, I realized something was not clicking. It was a little strange that she was talking about a few people that I had very little knowledge of – mostly because they were one year junior to me. And she also was having difficulty remembering some of my friends.

And then I realized what had happened. I had a memory lapse and I confused Anu Malik with Anu Nayak from my batch. Anu Malik – who I was talking to was one year junior to me. Once I realized that, everything became very simple. I did remember a few things about her and the friends she used to hang out with. But I did not own up to her about my lapse that day!!

We kept talking about running. She was wondering if it was too late for her to start running. I, of course, kept encouraging her to start slow and steady. I told her about the oldest man who ran a marathon (102 years old Indian guy in Canada) who started running at the age of 81 because he was getting bored of life since he had just lost his wife!!

One thing led to the other and eventually Anu did start running. In fact, this Sunday, she ran her first 5K race. I followed up with her next day on FB asking her about the run. I still remember my first 5K. I knew it would be special to her. And then I let her know that I would be in Delhi the next day and if she had recovered from the race, I would more than happy to put in a run with her.

That is how our running appointment was fixed. I went in earlier to Lodi Gardens and put in a 5K run by myself and then waited for her. She had told me that her running group would be there too. I was excited about meeting another running group and run with them but most importantly, catch up with Anu.

I saw her after 24 years but she was easy to spot in the crowd. We split from the running group and put in a 4.5K run by ourselves. We talked about a lot of our college friends and our daughters and how they are growing up in different environment than ours and such.

In the end, she came to say bye to me and see me off in my car. (I think she went back to stretch with her running group). As we walked to the car, I finally got the guts to sheepishly bring up an old topic. I finally let her know that I had actually mistaken her for another person when we talked first. But I am glad things turned out the way they did. Otherwise, I would have been deprived of a chance to run with a college junior of mine!!!

She was characteristically graceful about it. Now, my next assignment is to make sure that the original Anu (Nayak) never reads this blogpost 🙂