Usually, on the road, I am the one learning about other countries. You know the cab driver from Ethiopia in DC, the restaurant waitress from Serbia in Portland, the porter from Ghana in Atlanta airport and such. I certainly have a lot of questions for them about their countries of birth. Rarely do I get a chance to teach somebody from a foreign country stuff about their own country.

Well, that did happen this week.

I had finished my dinner meeting with Bob (from work) in the restaurant of the Marriott hotel at Philly airport and had walked him to the parking lot. With all the flying and meetings, the middle of the week was already feeling like the end of the week for me. I was walking back in the hotel, mentally calculating that I would grab my ipad, go to the bar, pick a nightcap and clear out all the pending emails from my inbox.

It was then that I met this really cheerful and helpful lady who asked if I needed help. (Frankly, I was a little confused since I did not know my way back from the parking lot connector to the elevators). I did recognize her as the same lady who had checked me in when I arrived at the hotel. And I remembered her name – Roxana.

After she gave me directions, I thought I would thank her for helping me twice. So, I asked her whether she was from Philadelphia area. She said – No, she was from Costa Rica! I was like “Wow! I love your country”. Over the next thirty minutes I told her how my family loves Costa Rica and we always try to excite people we meet to visit Costa Rica.

She asked me about some of my favorite places. I told her about Guatil. She was not sure where this place was. I told her that it was a village where there are only twenty households – and everybody made pottery. My daughters got lessons on how to make pots there. She had never heard of that place!! Fortunately, I had my iPad handy. I quickly took her to my website and showed her pictures. Then Google maps showed that this village was within 100 kms from her own place!! And she had not heard about this place!!!

Then I talked about the beautiful waterfall that very few people knew of. How we had to trek thru dirt road to reach that place. There were no signs of civilization. So, after we had dived in the water, we had come to the realization that we had to change our clothes behind bushes. Showed her the pictures of the waterfall. Turns out she had never heard of “Janllos de Cortes” either.

Of course, she knew many other places we had been to. But she did conclude that her country was much more beautiful than she herself knew. And that she could not believe that she had to learn that from an Indian living in US!! She made a list of places from my website that she had to visit when she was back in Costa Rica. She walked away thinking I was the most traveled person in the world. At least most traveled in her mother land. Between you and me, you know that I am not that well traveled in Costa Rica at all. Let alone the rest of world. But it always helps to have local friends like Jorge and Victoria and ask them – “Tell me about places in your country that most tourists don’t go to, but you would take your family”!!

Felt really good! As a result, I had two nightcaps!!!

There is an old Nazrulgeeti (songs written by a famous Bengali poet called Nazrul) that went something like “Potho cholitey / Jodi chokitey / Kobhu dekha hoy…”. Roughly translated, it means “Traveling on this road / If someday, suddenly / I get to meet you”…

That was the song that I was remembering as the Delta flight from Portland started its descent in to Minneapolis. I had an hour and a half layover to head out to St. Louis. And my mind went back to Joydeep – our good old friend from Dallas days – who is one more of those great persons that I got to know personally and professionally. He had joined our group as a young guy way back at the turn of the century and has since, reached one professional highpoint after another. In the latest great career move, he has recently joined a Minneapolis based company. I recollected, sitting in the plane, that he had mentioned something about bringing his family to Minneapolis for house hunting.

Moment the plane landed, I sent a text message to him saying that I was in his vicinity to make sure his house hunting was going on well and he that had had no second thoughts of staying put in Dallas.

No response.

The plane was yet to reach the gate. I called him. Went straight to his voicemail. He had either finished his trip and was inflight back home or his cellphone battery was dead. Called his wife – Swapna who is also a dear friend of Sharmila and myself. Went straight to her voicemail. “Dang! they are headed back to Dallas”, I thought!

When we got out of the gate, I checked the American Airlines (based out of Dallas) screen. Sure enough, a Dallas flight left half an hour back. Could not believe how close I came.

And then I got a text message saying “Just landed”. I did not immediately respond, figuring I would do so after reaching my gate for the flight to St. Louis. In about ten minutes I got a call from Joydeep asking where I was. A few confused minutes later, I realized, he had not left Minneapolis. In fact, he just landed. His family was joining him in Minneapolis in a different flight.

As you can imagine the next few steps included quickly checking airport map, rushing towards an agreed upon point and get a quick drink together. His family eventually landed too but they had proceeded to baggage claim and could not join us due to the security stuff.

It was absolutely great to get together with such an young and dashing guy as Joydeep.

As my flight to St. Louis took off, I was again thinking of the odds of meeting somebody that I was just thinking of an hour back. He, coming from Salt Lake City. I, just connecting thru! Again, I was reminded of the Nazrulgeeti!!

A few months back, Ritesh had reached out thru Facebook reminding me how we got to know each other – I had interviewed him in campus (this was also my alma mater) and offered him a job in Dallas. He had reached out to me to thank me about that event from fifteen years earlier. He felt a lot of his subsequent success in career and life was defined by that moment. And he had a request to meet me sometime during my travels. I had promised him to do so and wrote down in my small notebook of “People I have promised to meet”.

Yesterday was a pretty long set of meetings in New York. First the customer meeting went an hour over (which is usually good for business 🙂 ) followed by the customer’s request to have a drink after the meetings (which is usually very good for business 🙂 ). However, at the end of all that I did get a chance to meet Ritesh. Unfortunately, I had to make him wait as I finished all my calls which had gotten pushed out due to the disruption in my calendar.

As I finally put my phone down and shook the hands of patiently-waiting-Ritesh, my first question was “Is there a single puzzle I have posted till date that you have NOT cracked?’. If my memory serves me right, he has cracked most of my puzzles.

We got out of the hotel, trudged through slush and sludge (NYC had terrible weather) and went to a restaurant nearby and settled down. And then caught up on the past fifteen years. It was absolutely heartening to hear about his success in career as well as the tremendous progress some of his batchmates who were also recruited that time has made over the years.

Surprisingly, we spent a lot of time talking about life, death, time and such other things that I would not have expected anybody who is still some way away from 40 to show any interest in. Finally, just as he was leaving, I found out one more connection – we lived in the same dorm (each dorm had 30 students) – D13 – although separated by nearly 10 years!

It was good to catch up with this gem of a human being, Ritesh!!

One more of those Monday mornings. In the airport very early, long queues for TSA Precheck (much longer than the normal ones) and thousands of people milling around like a retinue of ants in your yard. I kept up with my usual routine – checked in my suitcase (it is one of those that you carry on with you but I have started checking in so as to let me board the plane as one of the last passengers in a unhurried fashion), walked to the one TSA PreCheck line that I know is usually shorter and then instead of taking the train, started the long walk to my Terminal in the underground tunnel.

Somewhere during that walk, I saw this gentleman. First, I thought it was recorded music. And then I noticed it was he who was playing it. He was playing the saxophone so beautifully that I had to stop there and hear him play for about ten minutes. And then during his break, I found out from him that Atlanta airport has started this program for local musicians to come and perform live at the airport. It was then that I recollected that a few minutes back, I had indeed passed another gentleman playing the piano (on a keyboard though) in the large atrium area between North and South side of the airport (before security). I should have taken a picture of him too.

Atlanta airport has a great Arts program where it features a lot of local artists of all age and their creations in the airport. It was great to see them promoting music too!

In any case, I was getting late. As he went back to his saxophone, I resumed my long walk again….

Finished up last night with dinner and drinks with good old Subrata and Sharmistha during a very short stay in Houston!

I picked up the iPhone from the passenger side seat as I hit the road for a two hour drive to an offsite meeting and gingerly pressed the numbers. The familiar wait and then the familiar ringing tone from India. And then followed what seemed like endless hours.

What if I found the wrong person? I had gotten her phone number by putting together a few breakthroughs I had had and a few phone calls I made while in India and on my way back. Even then, Suparna (who was the final link the in the chain) and I had doubts whether we were talking about the same person.

Worse, what if she did not recognize me at all? Would she believe me if I named a few common friends? Can I jog her memory by specific incidents that I remember? That would be a total anticlimax for another painstaking search.

If I reminded her that we studied together in the same class and section – although just for one year, 1975 – would she remember? If I told her that we used to go in the same school bus and we were separated by one bus stop only – would she remember? I had vivid recollection of her. Every morning, I would get in the school bus and by the time I would settle down in the first row of the bus, the bus would have stopped at her stop and picked her up. Almost always I would be the first person to greet her as she got on to the bus. And she was always the person who would wave me good bye when I got down from the bus after school and started my walk to my home.

I remembered her first name distinctly – Malabika. For the life of me, I could not remember her last name. The closest I had come to tracking her was about a few years back while looking for Arghya (who lived close to Malabika then). Fortunately, I was able to track him down after another long search, but not her.

Somebody picked up.
“Hello?”. It was a female voice. Good first step 🙂
“Is this Malabika?” Good second step 🙂
“Yes. Who is this?”
Now came the most difficult part.

“I actually studied with you for a year. That was way back in 1975 in Benachity Junior High School. Do you remember me? My name is Rajib Roy”.
Pindrop silence. Dang!!!

“You lived on Ranapratap Road, did you not?”, I asked starting to lose hope.
“Yes, I did”.
“And you did study in the Benachity Junior High School, did you not?”
“Yes, I did”.
“And you took a blue colored mini bus to go to school everyday, did you not?”
“Indeed!”

Bingo! I had the right person!! Now the problem was to see if she could remember me.
“Do you remember me? I lived in North Avenue. I had a very close friend Arghya who lived near you”.
I don’t think she could hear everything I said. But she heard the “Arghya” part.

“Is this Arghya?”, she asked with some excitement in her voice.
Dang!!! Striking out again, I realized 🙁

“No. This is his friend. And yours. The name’s Rajib Roy”.
Something stirred in her memory.
“What did you say your first name is”?
“Rajib”
“Rajib – maaney amader class-er first boy?” (Rajib – you mean the guy who stood first in our class?)
“Well, I did stand first in the section you and I were in. Not for all the sections combined. I think Nishi beat me that year”. She was clearly jogging my own memory.
“Of course, I remember you. I forgot your last name.”.
“That’s okay. That makes two of us :-)”.

Forty five minutes later, I realized that in all those trips to my dad’s house in Kalyani, I have been literally driving past her house every single time!! But what was most inspiring was to learn about some steep challenges her personal life had thrown her way and how she conquered all those challenges and came up on top of the heap of those difficulties.

To become a single mom supporting two daughters and one daughter yet to be born and then single handedly raise them to be successful human beings is not exactly for the faint of the heart. Especially in India.

One unfortunate part – I missed her mom by a few weeks. I remember her because she used to come to see Malabika off at the bus stand. Regrettably though, she passed away in the very recent past.

You can only guess what one of my goals for the next India trip is going to be!! Apparently, we are not done with waving each other good bye yet….

For once, I will admit that there is some good that came out of my parents constant nagging me to study hard when I was a kid. I wonder if Malabika would have made the connection had it not been for the report card that year!!!