10 January
2018
10 January
2018
“The child is the father of man”
In a somewhat different twist to the age old Shakespearean quote… here is a classic role reversal. The child helping the father take baby steps and learn how to walk by himself!!!
When my brother and I reached home, the first thing dad wanted to do is try practicing some more walking!
When we are out for a week, apparently he tried again walking by himself when everybody was sleeping and had yet another fall. Fortunately, he again escaped easy – with a bump on his forehead. (Last time he had stitches).
As worried as I am that he is being too impatient, full points for not giving up on the urge to walk around again in spite of the falls…
10 January
2018
Time honored tradition
8 January
2018
Ubud: Small Village. Mega Intersection!!!
This is one of those mega intersections that has so many people and so many connections involved that I may not be able to keep everything on the up and up. It involves Atlanta, Durgapur, California, Illinois, Panang Malaysia, Dubai and of all places – Ubud (a small village in Bali).
Let’s start with the picture on the top as the initial point. That is Natasha and Nayanika. They became friends over a summer when they were doing a summer program at North Western in Evanston, Illinois. The day I had gone to pick her up to come back home, the university had arranged for a free things – including a lunch for the students and the parents. I found myself randomly sitting in a table with mostly young kids either crying or talking excitedly promising to keep in touch with each other. Also at the table was the gentleman second from one end in the lowest picture.
Not knowing anything better (and frankly not able to help myself), I struck up a conversation with him. Realized that he – Gaurav – is a very successful, entrepreneur in the Bay Area. So, those were three strikes against me – I am neither successful, nor an entrepreneur and certainly cannot afford to live in the Bay Area. But I persisted. And hit pay dirt!!! In a few minutes, we realized that we are married to classmates. His wife – Anupama – was Sharmila’s classmate in primary school. What’s more – his mother in law was Sharmila’s teacher for a year!
Back to Bali.
Natasha had mentioned that Nayanika and her parents would be in Nusa Dua too. Except that by the time we reached Nusa Dua, they had already left. (I chalk it up to higher level of intelligence 🙂 Must be the water in Bay Area 🙂 ). Not to give up easily, I found out that they were in Ubud and promised Natasha that one way or the other, I will make sure she got to see Nayanika.
After visiting a few villages, we landed up in Ubud for lunch. Where the Sharan family swung by!!! That marked the meeting of two classmates. In fact, two sets of them!! That explains the second picture from the top – Sharmila and Anupama.
“I do not recognize your face. I like your hairstyle though. I wonder why!! ”, I had to humbly admit to Amit – the gentleman in white shirt who had come with Anupama.
“I am Amit – Anupama’s brother”, he replied, laughing.
“Oh! I remember your name. You were one year junior to me in school”.
And we talked a lot about our school teachers. Then finally, I asked
“Where did you go to college?”
“RE College, Durgapur”
“Day scholar?”
“Yes”
“Which department?”
“Electronics”
“Hmmm… That is interesting”
“Why?”
“Do you know a Soumya Kanti Ghosh?”
Seeing him deep dig into his memory… I helped further – “You might remember him as Apu. He was a day scholar too”.
“Oh! Apu. Soumya. He was our class topper”
“Indeed!!”
“How do you know him?”
“Funny you should mention that. You see that lady?”, I asked him pointing to Sharmila.
“Sharmila?”
“She is his sister. He is my brother in law”.
“No way”
“Yes way”
Was that cool or was that cool?
Three Sharan families had come from Bay Area, California, Panang, Malaysia and Dubai, UAE. The Roys had come from Atlanta, Georgia. We had the opportunity to meet in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The whole thing happened because one Roy girl and one Sharan girl went to a program together in Evanston, Illinois. To realize that their mothers were classmates!! And so were their maternal uncles!!!
What is the chance of that?
1 January
2018
Guess who I ran into?
Phase A of our vacation over. Kids spent a good amount of time with grandparents and cousins. Moving to Phase B now. Time for just the four of us to spend time together.
With that in mind, we reached Kolkata airport quite some time before our flight to Bali, Indonesia. The airport was empty and the checking in, immigration and security check were all super smooth. The girls were hungry. So we headed towards the restaurants inside. I knew one restaurant that I thought they might like.
We turned left, got past the construction area of the duty free shop and then started cutting across the shop. Just as we did it, I saw somebody walking by. In fact, by her uniform, it appeared that she worked at the duty free shop. Looking at her, I was fairly sure I had seen her before. In fact, I thought I knew who she was too.
I was looking at her to see if it was indeed the person I thought she was – without making it appear too embarrassing. It was a 50-50 situation and I was weighing the options of how to approach her. (It could be really really weird if I walked up to a random young lady and asked her if she recognized me and she said no. I would never hear the end of it from Nikita and Natasha. Or Sharmila, for that matter).
Fortunately for me, she recognized me too!! In fact, she talked first!!!
Although itt was for a brief few minutes (she was on duty), I was able to introduce my family to Anzee. Last time I had met Anzee – in fact the only time I had met her – was in the bar at ITC Sonar hotel. Three and a half years back. She had served me and my brother some wine and I had realized while finding out her story (what else is new? 🙂 ) that she hailed from a place very close to where my sister had adopted my niece.
Nikita took a quick snap of Anzee, myself and Sharmila. It was delightful running into her and getting a quick update on her and her family!!
1 January
2018
Cousin time!!!
31 December
2017
Hilarious moment with my mother in law…
Here I am sitting at the breakfast table early in the morning trying to get a few of the blogposts away. Sharmila and the kids are sleeping. The in-laws are awake. I just finished serving the first cup of tea and sat down with them…
My mother in law, who has been keenly observing my laptop that I was using to post my blogs suddenly asked…
“Apple-er eto naam aachhey to apple-ta ordhek khaoa keno?
Oboshyo ordhek noy – ekta kamor deoa”
Basically, after watching the logo of Apple, she wants to know if Apple is such a big company, why is their logo half eaten?
🙂
31 December
2017
Sharing a lighter moment after 40 years!!
Once in a while, I pick up some mild compliments about my writing style. Mostly undeserved, I must hasten to add. That said, if there are two teachers I lay most of the credit for my writing style, it would be Mrs. Debjani Biswas (ninth and tenth grade English teacher) and Sir Kelvin Donegan (my fifth grade English teacher). I was lucky enough to meet Mrs. Biswas this year in Pune.
The search for Sir Donegan was much tougher. Most of the teachers in school – in fact all of them, I would say – did not have the faintest idea about his whereabouts. Worse, I had heard rumors that Sir Donegan was no more. Because of that rumor, my intensity to search for him had reduced too.
Earlier this year, I found somebody who said that she goes to the same church as Mrs. Donegan every Sunday. And she confirmed that the news about his death was largely exaggerated. A few weeks later, I had a phone number in my hand.
As is my wont, I opened with the breaker-of-all-ices “You won’t know me sir….”.
He duly confirmed that!!
I quickly established my credentials by giving him some of the details from 1977.
If his words were to be believed, he was beyond delight to hear from one of his old students. Apparently, I am the only student from yesteryears that he has had a chance to talk to in over 30 years.
Turned out Sir Donegan left school and embarked on a completely different career in the merchant navy. Which meant, he was always out of the country. Eventually, he went back to his first passion in life – growing plants! He is into hydroponics and lives near the farm in Himachal Pradesh (1250 miles / 2000 km away from our school).
The most encouraging news I had from him that day was that he still visited his old house in Durgapur every year during Christmas / New Years time. You can do the math now… went to pick up my in-laws… thoroughly delayed on the highways… there was still some time to be squeezed out to see Sir Donegan!! Last time I talked to him? 1977! 40 years back!!
To say I had a great time would be a gross underestimation of the exhilaration I had upon seeing him. He had a great influence on me and most of the students. (I had written about him on a blogpost dated Oct 30 this year while discussing the controversy around the word “stoppage” – in case you wanted to look it up in my blog).
I updated him on all the teachers from school, learnt a lot about hydroponics and also the adventures he had in his life while traveling the world with the merchant navy.
The facial expressions should give you a good idea about the fun that was had!!
31 December
2017
Another moment created for the kids!!
Most who have been lucky enough to grow up with grandparents around them will vouch for their undeniable influence – especially in the early stages of childhood. While the advent of modern economic growth started breaking up joint families in India, kids – in most of the cases – maintained reasonable access to their grandparents.
I was lucky to see mine every year. I had only three of them. My dad lost his dad at his tender age of two and a half. My recollection of my grandparents is still of their incredible kindness and generosity towards us. It was as if, as grandchildren, there was no demand too steep and there was no infraction that were punishable in the least bit.
They were our alibi when we were in trouble with our parents, our go-to when we got scared of our parents, our source for funding when our parents won’t buy us a knick knack and our never ending well of stories.
Nikita and Natasha, having been born in the USA do not have that easy an access to their grandparents in India. There was a time we used to come every year to maintain the routine I had with my grandparents. Then that stopped as they grew up and their life got taken over by…. well, life!
You can only imagine how excited I was that this time when both of them expressed the desire to visit their grandparents. One of the moments I was hoping to create – and that is something that had happened only once in my life time for myself – was to see if I can put both them with both side grandparents together under a roof for a day.
That explains the tiring trip to Durgapur and back (a total of 12 hours of driving – we got stuck in a couple of nasty traffic gnarls on the highway) to get Sharmila’s parents. And then after staying over in Kolkata for the night, we were all in Kalyani at my parents’ place!
The smile on the faces pretty much captures it all!
I hope the kids will retain some spotty memories of this day somewhere in their subconscious long after many of us are gone…
P.S. My dad was thrilled to talk to somebody who is from his old city Durgapur and he had a lot of questions around how the city has fared ever since he left!
29 December
2017
This could be injurious to his brain!!
I was half expecting this.
My dad, trying to fight back his brains getting scrambled after the stroke, had a hard jolt trying to understand what happened to Natasha’s hair. Tasha, had dyed her hair blonde some time back. Over the last few months as the hair has grown, her strands are natural dark (from the root side) and then after about half length starts becoming blonde.
My dad’s relatively low exposure of dyeing hair entirely comprises of making the hair look dark again (from grey) but never from dark to any thing else.
As you see in the picture, he held her hair in his fingers for quite some time trying to investigate what was going on. He asked quite a few questions – much to Tasha’s merriment – and then gave up trying to understand it!!
