Roger is in town!! Had a great time chatting with him the whole day yesterday. Our topics of discussions were as varied as weird – from marriages to financial markets to retirement to what to do now that we are finally this young… Of course, there was a lot of reminiscing our days in Mongolia. This is the first time we met after venturing into our first “let’s go somewhere where most people know not much about” trip.

Speaking of what to do now that we are finally this young… we hit upon a not-so-innovative-any-more idea. “Let’s go to another place that most people do not know much about.” As we hopped from a coffee place here to a bar there – we asked a few people what they knew about a particular country we came up with. It is with great satisfaction we noted that nobody knows much about that country at all!!

The search for flights has begun already (yeah! too many stops involved 🙁 ). We are withholding the destination name till we get our respective spouses – Sharmila and Shauna – to approve it. We have taken enough care in our choice to ensure that the spouses will never want to go there 🙂

As enjoyable as the bike ride was, the sitting by fire with some scotch and wine with the two guys who got me into motorbiking was even more enjoyable. That was almost six hours of discussions on mostly philosophical questions.

The most intriguing topic was “What if you were told that you have one year to yourself – you do not have to worry about family responsibilities, you do not have to worry about work – you got one year to go out in the world and do whatever you want to do – what all would be in your list of things to do and why?”

Undoubtedly made all the more enjoyable for Magesh and Avijit by the fact that I have a throat infection and could not speak a lot 🙂

[In case you were worried, nobody rode after drinking. Their bikes are in our garage and they were dropped home].

One of those friendships that were struck in June 1991 that has carried thru for over 26 years. Thru that, we have each jumped cities four or five times, jobs even more (worked together in three different companies), had two kids each but have been a great support for each other and have had some amazing times together as families.

We have had our differences too – he was an avid beer drinker and I would not touch beer, he would do Android and I would not do anything but Apple (he has switched now, as I understand) and he reveled in new cars and I would buy one only to drive it to the ground.

But our biggest difficulty has been on agreeing who has a better sense of humor. Most friends who we asked to mediate would retort “Is none of the above an option?”.

It was good – nay, great – to see Raj and Viji back in our town and at our place…

Tagging Sharmila, Subrata, Sharmistha

The last time I played the Tabla with Subrata was in 1980 in school. He had played a Runa Laila number on his guitar and I had played the tabla. They was eighth grade.

In between, he has picked up a lot more instruments including the piano and the drums. Also he got married to Sharmistha with the incredible voice and talent for singing. My tabla has not improved much from those days…

That said, it was a great evening.

Actually, it was beyond great!!!

I do not want to bore with the details but somewhere in that evening, there was a terrible pun I had come up with as well as some serious explanation of Herodotus’s observations of how the Persians passed any law … giving rising to the phrase “in vino veritas” !!!