Natasha and I were walking down a street of Providence after she said good byes to her new dorm friends. As we crossed a street intersection, while I kept listening to her continuous stories of exciting experiences of the last two weeks, I noticed that we went past a street vendor who was sitting all by himself with quite some kinick-knacks spread around him to sell. After a few seconds, I stopped Tasha and said – “Let’s give that guys some business. It is starting to rain. You never know how business has been for him. Seems to be wanting to make money the honest way.” I was fully expecting Tasha to brush me away. Luckily, she said “I needed to buy something for grandma – let’s see what he has”.

We took a few steps back and as Tasha spent over ten minutes deciding what to buy for her grand mom, I started making my moves to become friends with this stranger. It always starts with “Where are you from?”. He said ” Rhode Island”. Then looked at me, sized me up and added “But I am originally from Senegal”. And that is all the opening I was looking for. I asked him a lot of questions about Senegal, his family there, how good business has been and all I could to get to know another human being without being too much of an weirdo.

Once in a while a customer would come by and I would step aside to give him a chance to push his wares. Add then Tasha was done. But I was not. So, I told her that she should get one for herself. From me. That trick always works. And Silla – that is what I found his name was – and I started chatting again. From his French (Senegal was ruled by the French), to World Cup soccer to his ailing parents back at home, our topics could not have been more varied. I learnt that the name of the capital is Dakar and surprisingly, found out that Senegal is the westernmost country of the “Old World” (Europe, Africa, Asia). It is further west than all European countries!

It did make me reflect on a few things – the similarities of himself and myself – both first generation immigrants – with ailing parents to deal with many many miles away. And how, in spite of all those extremist thoughts that get news time (“playing soccer makes you unAmerican” is my favorite recent example) that make us wonder where this country is going, the inescapable fact is, this is still where people come to simply get a chance to work hard and make a living. Compared to many other countries, it is still a place that offers you a level playing ground to give you a shot at being happy. Sure, you have to work hard for that. But that beats entitlements and discrimination any day.

Tasha was done. She had two trinkets she had chosen. The total was $22. I immediately started haggling. Not sure why I did it. Perhaps it is the Indian in me. Perhaps I don’t want to let myself ever believe that money is an easy thing. I settled for $20. Still not sure why that $2 was important to me when I had the whole chance to not spend money at all.

Finally, I asked Silla if he would mind me taking a picture with him. He stood up to oblige me and that is when I realized how tall he was. “Ever played basketball?”, I asked. “No. But, I sure loved soccer”. And that was one more common thread between him and me and most first generation immigrants I know in this country.

I sure hope to come see him if my daughter ever chooses to go to Brown. Or If I simply happen to pass by Providence.

Last saw Ravi Ballamudi in Mar 1989. When I took up this new job, I found out that he lived couple of hours away from the airport I was going to visit often. This Tuesday evening, therefore, I headed straight towards his direction after landing instead of going to the hotel.

Ravi was kind enough to drive half way through and we met at this diner in the middle of nowhere right next to the highway by the side of a big truck stop and an outlet mall. Turned out to be a great place though.

We picked up from exactly where we had left over twenty five years back. It was like we never left the hostel to begin with!! As you can see from the pictures, we kicked our shoes, put up our feet and talked for hours. We almost went room by room in our hostel to see if we knew where all our old friends landed up! All that was missing was some Tarams tea. Fortunately, there was a bar nearby!!

Again, from the pics you can see how much fun we were having! It was great to see good old Ravi!!

No trip to SFO is ever complete without barging into Aditi’s house around dinner time completely unannounced 🙂 I have been lucky enough to see her, Eric (her husband) and her kids couple of times a year for a long time! We have been friends since May 1983!!

It was absolutely splendid to see the whole family and pick up some tips from Eric on brewing beer and barbecuing in the Green Egg!!

Together with a couple of pictures from last evening, I have attached a grainy picture of her and Masi (her mom) from around the time we became friends!!!!

It was a tough day. Good customer meetings in SFO but some tough internal stuff I had to deal with. It did not help that I was three hours behind after a coast to coast flight.

Okay, now rollback five months. I was coasting towards my planned year off starting from Memorial Day. And then on my birthday, I get a call from a executive recruiter and I politely pointed out I am getting ready to take a year off. I was so enthusiastic about my year off that I described in great detail about what I will do. The executive recruiter seemed suitably impressed – almost carried away by my energy. But let me tell you how good these guys are. I thought he might take a year off following me. Instead I was on a plane for an interview in two weeks time!!!

Throughout this process that went over three months, there was this quiet, behind the scenes lady from a different office (SFO) who took care of all the difficult stuff – my travel, my schedule, my expense report. (Yeah! Working in a big company, I have no recollection on how to do those things). One of the most helpful ladies, I have come across. In fact, during one of those Thank You phone calls, I promised her that I will come and see her next time I am in SFO.

And today was that day. In between meetings, I had enough time to punch her office address in Google Maps in my iPhone, walk for ten minutes and surprised the heck out of her as she was busy watching the USA soccer game with the rest of the office folks.

You can only imagine how surprised (hopefully for the positive) Kristin Fresquez was. I had only 15 minutes. That was enough to catch up on her background, her stays in New York, San Fran… enough for me to say I got to know a new human being today.

And that is what I want my life to be. I will always work hard to make myself something in my job. But getting to know human beings is what I want to live for. One life is too short not to make a difference to as many people as I can.

Completely funny aside: Want to guess what her first words were when she saw me? “Is this one of your intersection points?”

Yes. And a doggone good one too!!!

I have to give Preetha credit for creating this intersection! She found out from FB that I had come to Providence to drop Tasha at Brown. She took a chance and contacted me to see if I was going to fly out of Boston. As luck would have it, although I flew into Providence, I was indeed flying out of Boston!

And then she and Ram were kind enough to take a train and a shuttle to Terminal A in Logan Airport to meet me! I had some time at hand and we simply walked over to the Hilton Hotel next door and settled down at the bar.

The last time I had seen them was in 2007 when Ram and I worked in the same team in Optiant. Speaking of crazy connections, Ram and his family were connected to a teammate of mine (Sujatha) in my post-Optiant job in Equifax who in her turn was connected (relative thru marriage) with another teammate of mine (Nari) in my pre-Optiant job in i2!! At this point of time, you can be completely excused for thinking 1.2 billion Indians are a very small well-knit tribe 🙂

In any case, it was great seeing the husband wife duo and we spent a lot of time remembering our old friends and then also talked a lot about ailing parents and the issues that their kids go thru who are not in India.

One side story on Ram. We used to have this contest every year in Optiant – we would put random number of jelly beans in a jar and you would have to guess the number of jelly beans in it. The closest person won. Ram won it every single year. He would run the most sophisticated analytical models and come very close. Every year. Till one year, one really smart lady completely trumped his algorithm. She would just add 1 to his number. She was sure he would be the closest. She took a half and half chance that he would underestimate versus overestimate!!! Now, that was smart!!!

This week started with a bang. Got to see a friend Lata Jayaraman – from 1986. We were introduced to each other by an ex girl-friend of mine. Ever since, our lives have gone in very different ways but once in every half a dozen years or so, luck would put us very close to each other and we would catch up on our past – the friends that we had those days (admittedly, I am the one who keeps giving the updates 🙂 ), her uncle who was my Physics professor in college, her cousins who were my next door neighbors in college dorm and so on.

Last Monday, I was able to see her for a couple of hours again. She was in town for some American Cancer Society convention. My friend is nothing if not a whole bundle of energy. I am the one who is relatively quiet when I meet her. So, you can do the math. In under two minutes of meeting her, she was talking about some medical terms that they had been evidently discussing during dinner. I was struggling to understand the relevance of the topic when she paused and explained in lay man’s terms. Evidently, all this time she was referring to bald heads 🙂

As always, one evening is way too short to catch up with all of Lata’s energies, but what the heck, I gave it a crack!!! At the end, I was so engrossed that I completely forgot to take her picture to capture in my “History of my Future. The First Draft” blog. I had to call her back from her room and get the valet guy to take a picture of us!!!

It was a long day in Chicago… In fact too long. But it is always well that ends well!! After literally 10 hours of straight meetings, I was done for the day dog tired. But there was always time to call up a old friend from the past. Plus I had to have dinner and I hate eating by myself.

And that is how Prasad Sista and I found ourselves together 12 years after our last meeting when he came to pick me up from the hotel to go for dinner. We were in the same college back in India (although I suspect when I went to college, he had barely learnt how to spell “college”). And then we worked together for a few years in the same company.

That was a evening of a lot of laughter. Of the “Kadi” jokes of IIT Chennai and the really really funny incidents from i2 days. I have always thought that I have been blessed to work side by side with some great people. But the fact that they still remember me and actually want to meet me makes me feel very special. Especially when that person is as great a guy as Prasad Sista!!!

If there is anything as exciting as meeting old friends while traveling on the road, it is probably making new friends in this exciting journey on the road we choose to call “life”.

Here is a new friend I made this week while catching up with my old friend – Reno. (See previous blogpost). And his name is Alejandro from Mexico. He was intrigued enough by my interest in making drinks that he gave me a couple of tips from his trade. The most valuable was the art of making layered drinks without getting the layers mixed up.

And here you can see him showing us how to make three drinks simultaneously!!! That was cool how he served three customers at the same time!! I need to go back some time to learn how to juggle bottles in the air while making cocktails!