One more in the series of India trip this time. It is more of a non-post than a post.

I am the last one who is at a loss for words. Right words, maybe. Words? Never 🙂 And yet, I have failed three times to lend words to my feelings of meeting Moniruddin (Khokon) and his family. You may remember how my first friend of life suddenly vanished from my life one fine day without much of a notice. And then how that started a very very long search to find my first friend of life. I distinctly remember the frustration and fear I had some days that I probably will never get a chance to see him again.

And yet, I did manage to see if – thru a lot of perseverance and a very well timed encouragement from Sharmila to keep looking. I had poured out my heart explaining the search and that first phone call I ever made with him after I was able to locate him.

Then, in a few weeks I actually visited him and his mom. My mind was an absolute etch-a-sketch of emotions – of actually getting to see in flesh and blood somebody that I had searched for a long time, somebody who was my first playmate in life, his mom who took care of me so much and that I had missed the chance to see his dad by a few years who simply used to dote on my the-then-very-young brother. For a couple of weeks, I had attempted to write out the experience of meeting him. Eventually I gave up. I was getting too overwhelmed to find any words.

Then I visited him again a few months later. This time, his mom and I sat down and talked endlessly about our lives. I know I had a lot to write about. I was not wanting in materials. And yet again, I could not find a way to express my feelings properly.

This time, I took my parents with me. It was almost like an action packed movie. My parents were so thrilled to see Moniruddin that they forgot to even walk to his house. They stood near where we had parked the car (See pic) and kept talking excitedly till my brother reminded them that his mom was probably waiting for us.

My mom and his mom were very close. And they got to see each other after a long long time. For the first few minutes they could not even talk without holding each other (see pic) – probably still not believing that they actually got to see each other. Unfortunately for all of us, uncle was not there to join in the get together. But you can see in the picture how my dad and my friend were having a great time together.

Now I know why cannot ever write a good post on meeting my long lost friend who appeared again. It is that last picture. It is that poignancy of his mom standing at the door of her house every single time silently. Every time I start writing I start imagining what must have been going thru her head – perhaps wondering whether she will see each other again? And that is the exact question I carried with me almost my entire life.

I think I need more time to express what it really means to get back your very first friend of your life.

This one has an intriguing twist at the end…

Having already met two friends from school days, I still had some time left before my flight was scheduled to leave Dubai. Fortunately, Shirshendu had said he would be free after office. That was the opportunity I needed. We got together at a bar near the airport for a couple of hours. We had been trying to co-ordinate a meeting for a long time.

Of course, it always starts with updating each other on our old common friends. And we had a lot of those to catch up on. And there was the Kalyani connection – his sister and his parents (separately) moved to Kalyani. As did my sister and my parents (separately).

Then we got to know about each other’s families and how he moved to Dubai to sell books and eventually worked his way into a successful executive in the construction business. I also learnt about his mom today. At the age of sixty five or so, she decided that she needed to learn something new. So, she took classes in recitation (elocution, reading poetry or as Bengalis would say “abritti”). Here is a stunner – within a short period of time she excelled in it and has given multiple performances. She now performs in TV too!!! Evidently, nobody has heard her complaining! She always has a solution ready before she articulates a complaint. I absolutely need to meet her. And probably take my mom with me too 🙂

If you saw us for those two hours, going thru the updates of friends of different stages in life – early school, late school, college, work etc etc – one by one in great detail (including the names of minibuses one of our friends took to meet his girlfriend – yet another common friend of ours) you could be easily forgotten for not realizing one small detail. And that twist is that you would have never guessed that Shirshendu and I had never met each other ever. Till today!! We never studied together in the same school at the same time. We were never classmates in our entire life.

But we had a zillion common friends. And through those friends, we were always deeply aware of each other. It is like we ran in parallel lines intersected by many many friends at the same time but our lines never intersected!

It was great meeting Shirshendu for the first time and catching up on all those old friends…

That is how my friend from school days Sanjay Sethi wrapped up our meeting. I had not met him and Saji Abraham ever since we finished our tenth grade. I had a thirteen hour layover in Dubai. That was as good a reason as any to catch up with two friends that I had not seen for 32 years!! Saji was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off.

The three of us went thru the whereabouts of about half our entire class (we had a total of 103 students). What was most heartening for me to see was how two of my friends from very early days have become such great successes professionally and personally. One has a thriving business here in Dubai and the other has globe trotted thru his entire high flying career in the banking sector. But above all, they always have time for our old school mates.

Got some real inspiration talking to them today.

Sanjay’s description aptly described how we felt walking away from that coffee place….We missed Sanjeev Gupta – the other high flyer today….

It was a long – really long drive from my brother’s house to the old age home where Sanghamitra’s mom stayed. That was Kolkata crowded roads in a terrible form. Honestly, I was a little apprehensive of what a old age home might look like. I had never seen one before. But mostly, my thoughts were around analyzing why are old age homes becoming more common now in India. Even at the turn of the century, fifteen years back, it was not that common, if there were any at all.

Slowly it started dawning on me how the society in India is going thru an evolution many developed countries have gone thru some time back. With the advances in technology, communication and transport, people have moved further away from their parents’ homes for jobs. First, communication has made it possible for people to know of opportunities in other parts of the country. A few decades back, nobody in Bengal would probably know about great opportunities in Bangalore. Second, advances in transportation has made it possible for people to live elsewhere near jobs and yet be in touch with their loved ones in a far more easy fashion. As as the middle class grew in general in India, like every human being, so did the need for independence and privacy.

In the first wave, that broke the concept of joint families. My father is a great example. He moved away from his village a mere 100 km (60 miles) away but that was his ticket to economic independence and freedom. He visited his mom every weekend in the village but it was a joint family no more.

It appears that there is a second wave going on now. In the previous wave, there was still one or two kids who always stayed back in the parents’ home and took care of them. But as communication and transportation continued to advance, kids of the middle class started getting exposed to opportunities much further flung away – totally different states and even different countries. Add to that the fact that people started having less number of kids (a reasonably success Family Planning Programme was launched in India in the seventies) and increasingly families are having both the husband and wife working. What that is resulting in is a wave of parents who have retired but suddenly find themselves without any kids or grandkids near them.

The kids and the grandkids are succeeding by most every benchmark a middle class family can measure with. But the associated casualty has been a further breaking up of the unit called a family. The kids have great intentions but no ability to take care of their parents (remember they are trying to optimize their life around their own kids’ education and their own professions, just like my dad did). Sometimes they are not even in the same country. Meanwhile, day by day, the parents are losing their ability to support themselves.

There is another effect I have noticed. Most of my friends’ parents seemed to have grown some or the other kind of psychiatric issues – depression being the most common of them. But this trip alone, I heard of stories galore of dementia, bipolar disorder and many other such issues. Many of you probably know that both my parents suffer on some of those counts (my mother much more severe than my father). I do not think this set of retirees were ever prepared socially to deal with a life where they do not have much work to keep themselves busy on one hand and on the other hand, have no loved ones around at home.

Those were the thoughts that I was lost in as the car weaved thru increasingly narrower roads. At one point of time after about one and a half hour of drive, we entered a street that literally could not take traffic from both sides. After navigating for about three kilometers in that really narrow street (and me getting more and more worried about how hospitable the old age home location would be), we suddenly came to the gates of “The Peace”.

Once I entered though, it was a completely different scene. It was a lush green property with beautiful flowers all over the place and a few small clean water bodies with seats all around. It was truly a dramatic change. Then I looked at the building. Every balcony had old people sitting outside their rooms staring at me. Suddenly, I became very self conscious. I was wondering whether they were forlorn to see outside people to talk to or were merely wondering what was a funny looking, shaven head guy with a big camera doing in their campus. Or maybe they were just merely enjoying the sun.

Eventually, I found my way to Sanghamitra’s mom’s room. Except she was not there. But soon I found a lady headed my way slowly with the aid of her walker. And that is how I met the lady who I had trekked there for. Over the next hour and a half we talked a lot about her family, her background, my family… the two cardiac arrests she has had, the adjustments she is having to make in her lifestyle – especially around food (she has a lot of restrictions). Without doubt, one of the kindest ladies I have ever met in my life. Given such a large change in lifestyle, she was remarkably jolly and positive in her attitude.

I wish I had a lot more time to just get to know her and her journey in life a little more but it was getting time for me to make the next long trek to the place where all my cousins had gathered and it was also getting past her lunch time. Bid her adieu and slowly walked back wondering “Would I be able to adjust to an old age home ever?”.

“You see life is not about the destination but the journey. The ultimate destination in life is always death. What is the big hurry reaching there? Let’s slow down and look around and enjoy the journey”, I explained.

I know. That was way too heavy for my ten year old nephew who, fittingly enough, stared at me blankly. (as a Bengali would put it “fyal fyal korey cheye roilo” 🙂 )

First the context…

You probably recollect from a previous blog that after checking out of Ibiza Merlin resort, instead of heading towards my brother’s place, we decided on the spot to go instead to Kalyani to revisit my parents who were absolutely surprised and delighted. You may also remember that the travel was very tedious. We covered about 60 miles in nearly four hours or so.

As we kept plodding along, my elder nephew was clearly getting impatient (as was my brother, by the way). At some point of time. the nephew had asked enough number of times how long would it take us to reach Kalyani that I was prompted to spout out the philosophical words quoted above.

“What does it even mean?”, he enquired.
“Well, once we reach Kalyani, what are you going to do? Most likely watch TV – right? Will you remember it next year when I come? Or will you remember more if we do something that we normally don’t do?”, I struggled to explain, clearly taken aback by his curiosity to actually understand what I said. (I know, silly nephew 🙂 ).

“Like what?”, he pressed on.
“Oh! I don’t know. Maybe we should look for some odd looking trees and stop to take pictures. Maybe we should stop by a roadside pond and see who can throw a stone farthest into the water. Maybe we should pick up one of those yellow flowers you see and count how many petals are there in a mustard flower. (The answer is four, btw. I had once stopped and counted). Or may be we should just stop and talk to a stranger and make new friends.”.

“Let’s do that”, he said.
Clearly surprised by the persuasive power of my own words and certainly not prepared for his “You said it. Now let’s do it”, I tried to defer the challenge by a classic stalling tactic – “Which one?”.

I would like to believe he is starting to think like me. But in all likelihood, he just remembered the last of the various examples I gave. “Let’s do the random new friend thing”. “Okay”, I said. Clearly, I was anything but okay. I needed some time to think this one thru. But soon enough, I had an idea. “How about we stop for a tea?”, I asked my brother. He was obviously tired of the traffic and readily agreed but the problem was it was nearly 2 PM. Well past lunch time. Where would we get some tea?

I guess where there is a will, there is a way. Under five minutes, we found a place that would serve tea. The tea stall lady was all by herself in her stall. Which was great – since I could talk to her at length. By this time, my nephew had grown cold feet and was suggesting that we probably should try the next tea stall. “Oh! come one. Let’s get out. If you don’t want to talk – that’s okay. Your job is to take pictures on my phone”. Which he was totally up to. Actually anything digital is like a candy to kids of today!!

And that is how we got to know our “Erenga-r chaayer maasi”. Erenga, we found out from her is the name of the village nearby and where she is from. Google maps showed this village to be a few kilometers due west of Chandannagar. “Chaa” means tea in Bengali (and not so surprisingly, many other languages in the middle east) and “maasi” is an endearing term every Bengali uses to respectfully address a lady (literally means “my mom’s sister”). And this is on Highway 13 – often called Delhi Road – connects Dankuni to Mogra and and is used to bypass the Grand Trunk Road on the west side of the Hooghly river.

We also learnt that seven months back she fulfilled one of her dreams and opened up the tea stall by the highway. She gets up early in the morning to make bread and omelette for breakfast for road side travellers along with tea of course. And then makes “ghugni” in the afternoon for lunch. And she then closes shop around 6 PM.

She also took me and my brother all around the shop showing us her set up. As my nephew kept on taking pictures one after the other. My brother explained to him the physics behind how the large earthen pot kept water cold for summer use. Here is one thing that struck me. Her set up was pretty standard. You can see from the pictures that she smashed coke (coal rocks) by hand and then used them to light up her earthen oven (‘unoon”). She had the standard kettle, glass and so on. But she had something else – the large coffee jar/pot (see pic) – that I had never seen in a roadside tea stall in my entire life. You see them in the restaurants where they fill it up with hot coffee and it stays hot for a long time. You simply pour coffee out of it.

I asked her, why and how did she get that coffee jar/pot. She talked about how many of her customers were getting impatient waiting for her to make fresh tea. To solve that she found out about this jar/pot and got somebody to buy it for her from Kolkata!!! My first thought was “That is pretty entrepreneurial”. My second thought was “Ah! More travelers in a deathly hurry to reach their destination”.

As I said good bye, I told her that we will stop by next time we were on that road. She repeatedly asked us to come during “Joyisththo maas” (around May/June). Evidently, her village is famous for its mangoes and she will keep a few for us!!!

Not sure what the nephew made of the whole experience. But he spent about thirty minutes explaining to my dad and mom in great detail the whole event when we reached Kalyani. And they sat with him listening with rapt attention… They clearly were in no hurry to reach any destination…..

First of all, I am back to Kolkata airport with good phone and internet connection! Need to start writing my travelogs…. Starting with a phenomenal get together last afternoon. I will tell you how exciting it was. Being an absolute stickler for time (even in Kolkata, I managed to show up for the get together on the dot at 12:30 pm – although I needed all the luck in Kolkata), I had scheduled two hours for this get together. I had figured we would run out of stories from 1973-1976 in that time. Well, we went over our schedule by another couple of hours and even then we were literally kicked out by the janitor who needed to clean the restaurant before his shift got over 🙂

This one was a great one for me personally. I had these friends I had made in first grade (and one of them in pre-kindergarten) and over the last few years, I had found out their whereabouts and was in touch with them individually. But never managed to meet them (save a few). Finally, as luck would have it, seven of us got together under the same roof!! The last time that happened was literally 39 years back 🙂

Unfortunately, a few more could not make it (it was Republic Day in India and they had office and school duties). And tellingly, none of the girls made it. As somebody mentioned “Saala, sedino lengi merey gelo, aaj-o lengi merey dilo” 🙂 For personal safety I am neither going to translate that nor divulge who said it 🙂 Are you listening, Ajanta, Aditi and Suparna? 🙂

I always thought I remember incidents from the past more than others. These guys beat me hands down. Specially Mrinal’s ability to remember as well as tell stories was mind blowing. Ah! those stories of gulmohar tree and Atish’s coveted tiffin of “lobongolotika”s !!!

Since Facebook is awash with pictures of people reconnecting with their old school friends over lunch or dinner at fancy restaurants, we figured we should instead, stay close to our roots. We re-enacted what might have been if we all stayed together and studied in the same college together. We gathered on the street and the ones who smoke bought cigarettes from the street guy and lit them up. We, the non-smokers, did some secondary smoking and mostly talked and laughed above the din of the honking and screeching of Kolkata traffic 🙂 [To be sure, we also ate lunch together in a fancy restaurant but that is not what bonded us 🙂 ]

Atish, Arghya, Sanjay, Soumen, Sujit, you have to make it to the next Kolkata get together!! And for the ones who did make it…. I was barely six years old when I took a few steps of my life together with you (and I was four years when I did the same with Arindam Dasgupta) and I was able to do the same yesterday again. It is a great life I lead and thanks for making it so….It was absolutely marvelous to see those red-shorts-white-shirt tiny tots have succeeded so much in their lives!!!

We will meet again… As the old shayar goes…

“Musafir hain hum bhi, musafir ho tum bhi
Kisi mod pe phir mulaqat hogi… ” !!

Do you remember how at Bombay airport, a couple of years back, while waiting in the Business Lounge with my family, I had mentioned to Sharmila that the gentleman sitting at the other corner of the lounge poring over his laptop might have crossed my path some twenty five years back? And then how I had simply walked up to him and called out his name to see if he would look up? It was indeed him!

Well, a similar thing happened today while waiting in the Business Lounge of Dubai airport. I was very sleepy and still waiting for my flight to Kolkata (which subsequently was delayed). I was trying to keep myself awake by calling up friends from early school days to see if I could create some intersection points during my India visit.

Just as I started talking to a friend of mine from first grade, I thought I saw a gentleman briskly walking by while talking on the phone. I had a vague feeling that he might be the same guy that I had worked with about fifteen or so years back. When I say “worked with”, I mean we were in the same company – I was in Dallas, he was in Bangalore and we had met a few times during company events.

I decided to take my chances (at worst my risk was that I would get a strange glare from a stranger). After excusing myself rudely from my friend on the phone and promising to call him back very soon, I walked up and called out “Sankalp?”. Sure enough, it was him!! Good news is that he recognized me immediately!

It was great! I had not kept up with Sankalp in a long time. I was aware that he had started his own company in the early 2000s (which is when I probably saw him last). Had I not met him today, I would have had no idea what a great success that company has been.

Both of us had about twenty minutes (this was before I learnt that my flight had been delayed) and we made the most of it. Catching up on business, the challenges of taking a company public, our old friends from work, families and so on. The worst part – and this is probably starting to show we are growing old – was getting to know the unfortunate passing away of a couple of our old colleagues.

It was absolutely fascinating to run into Sankalp when I was least expecting him. He always was and continues to be the role model for a lot of entrepreneurs.