14 May
2017
11 May
2017
Singapore. In Baltimore!
I reached the Marriott Baltimore lobby and immediately settled down on business stuff with my colleague – Kurt. An hour and a half later, I took a temporary break to get on to a call with our investors. I was on the call, pacing up and down the lobby when I thought I heard my name being called out. I looked around very quickly, still talking and generally ignored it. Till I heard my name being yelled out – this time more clearly and loudly.
I look around and what do you know? Good old Ajit was in the lobby meeting a customer. My history with Ajit goes back to the late 80s. He was a junior of mine in engineering college and we both lived in the same dorm (hall). Another connection I have with him is that he eventually married Soumya – who I got to know later in a completely different part of India as a friend of Srimathi. Srimathi, in her turn, was one of my closest friends in management school. Unfortunately, we lost her to cancer. The only solace I have is that I was literally one of the last persons she saw and talked to before passing away. I had taken a flight back to US after seeing her in Cancer Institute in Chennai. By the time I landed in Frankfurt, there was a message for me from her brother that she was no more.
Too many memories floated by my mind when I saw Ajit. Yet, I had to take care of the call and Ajit himself had to leave. So, we spent only a few minutes together – but promised to catch up for a longer time later…
BTW, in college, we used to call Ajit “Singapore”. Hence the title of the post. I do recognize that was a terrible stab at poetry 🙂
9 May
2017
Not fair… Mrs. Bose… Not fair…
You might recall from my blog (or FB updates) that early this year, I visited my third grade class teacher (home room teacher) Mrs. Chobi Bose in Kolkata. I had traced her after a lot of help from others and then finally met her after over three decades!! I wrote how lively she was. And how I was struck by how she had set her house up very tastefully just like she had done her house that I had visited in 1975!!
Thanks to her that evening, I found out the whereabouts of my second grade and my tenth grade class teachers. Last month, I talked to her and she helped me find my first grade class teacher!! It is like the gift just kept giving to me!!!
Thru my class mate Niladri Datta and that second grade teacher Mrs. Shastri, I found out today that our dear old Mrs. Bose, is unfortunately, no more.
As you grow older, you get more humility (and I certainly have long ways to go there) and realize that you are who you are, in many parts, because of the people who have influenced you. Outside of your parents, nobody can possibly influence you more than your teachers. And that is why it is such a noble profession.
But as age and humility set in for me, I continued to struggle to find out how to say Thanks to those teachers. It is not the case that I have made much out of myself – but whatever little I have done, I owe my gratitude to many people. Certainly the teachers.
In this age of Facebook, Whatsapp and cut-and-paste email, a Thank You message probably would not cut it, I had argued with myself. Nothing short of seeking those noble human beings out in real life and looking them straight in their eyes and say “Thank you for helping me who I am today” can possibly tell them what they meant to all their students.
And that is when the quest began to seek out my teachers and say Thank You to them. In that journey, I learnt an important lesson today…
… I better hurry up and avail of the first opportunity. Because, you know, you never know if you will get a second chance.
… and therefore, Mrs. Bose, even thru your departure from this earth, it would appear, you left another lesson for me.
… Now how do I get to say Thank You to you for that?
Not fair, I say, Not fair!!
30 April
2017
One good turn deserved another…
I ran a 5K race after a long time this morning. To make sure that I did not wait for that long a time for the next one, I went ahead and ran a second one this evening. Morning one was on a flat surface and I was able to post 8:13 min/mile. The evening one was on punishing hills and I had to slow down to 8:41 min/mile. But there was wine at the end of it 🙂
Nikita and our dog Jay Jay came to cheer me up. (Sharmila is visiting Natasha in New York).
Your probably remember some of the inspiring pictures of kids running in the morning. The evening one was no different. The evening run was to raise money for differently abled kids who are financially disadvantaged. There was one kid who clearly was differently abled who showed up (for the shorter version of the race) to raise money for his brethren.
I was touched by him enough to hang around till he showed up at the finishing line. I was completely humbled by the fact that somebody who can barely walk properly would show up for a race just to raise money for kids like him but in a different financial situation.
What blew my mind was the sight of his mom walking step for step with him all the way. What sacrifices must she have made to raise her son all her life!
Every time the next hill in my run threatened to take my breath away, all I had to do was remind myself of what I had just seen. The world was very even after that.
Let the records indicate that for all the divisiveness we have pushed ourselves to in the garb of so called knowledge and intelligence, our basic instinct of just being humane is often still intact!!!
29 April
2017
24 years of sticking with the one thing we agreed on…
One of us stakes the claim to be right….
The other one gets to call himself the husband…
For the ones who have avidly followed my posts on how she has unfailingly forgotten our anniversary date every year, this year, she put reminders on her iPhone for today and yesterday and day before yesterday….
Last night, after I came back from the West Coast late, before she went to bed, she wished me. I reminded her that it was still 11:55. She reminded me that she might not remember the next day.
Fair enough!
26 April
2017
She is officially the earliest teacher in my life that I got in touch with!!
The day was Jan 15, 1973. I was a tiny tot – all of six years old – when I got down from a strange looking bus – it was more of a re-purposed police van really – to a very foreign environment. I got out of the bus and stared with somewhat trepidation at my new school. That was my first day of being a first grader in Benachity Junior High School.
I trudged along the school entrance path and unlike other smart students, took some time to find my class. I was one of the last ones to arrive and found myself a spot in the very last row of benches. I was pretty nervous. Not really sure who talked to who first that day, but I did strike up an awkward conversation with the boy next to me. Turns out his name was Ansuman Mitra. Actually it still is. And we are still friends and see each other about once a year! “I have a new blue tiffin box”, I remember telling him. That, clearly, was the only thing I could talk thru my awkwardness. Probably, also the only thing that I was looking forward to that whole day.
Presently, a teacher came and announced that the class we were sitting in is 1B. Apparently, 1A still had a few benches unoccupied. And some of us got randomly picked and shooed away to the class next door. That is how I landed up in class 1A. And my somewhat budding friendship with Ansuman was cut short prematurely. In reality though, I sought him out during tiffin (recess) period to show my tiffin box 🙂
Well, it was that random choice that got me in front of my class teacher – Miss George as we called her then. I have but only a few memories of those days. Miss George teaching us English was one of the highlights. There was a red book and a yellow book. I remember some of the contents inside but most of it has faded off. I suppose they were filled with the letters of the alphabet and a lot of pictures.
One of the lasting memories I have about Miss George was that during one of those tiffin periods, I had fallen down (don’t worry, I was not athletic ever; it was not like I had a grand fall while trying to kick the soccer ball or something – it was indeed an ignominious case of me slipping on a stair right next to where they used to ring the big dong announcing that a period was over) and had bruised myself. Miss George had somebody get some medicine (Boroline?) from head teacher’s office and applied it on my knee and put me to ease.
Much later in life – around the mid eighties, somebody told me that Miss George lived somewhere near Aurobindo Avenue (I think that was the street name) and that she wanted to see me. I was such an idiot – and also a confirmed awkward – that I never took that opportunity to find her out and meet her.
Well, that particular memory has gnawed me for a long time. Ever since, I have approached many a people from my past with the “Do you know a Miss George from Benachity Junior High School?” At some point of time, I learned that she had left Durgapur and was in Kerala.
That long search of mine was put to rest last week when Mrs. Bose helped me get her number. It was with great consternation, I called that number. How do you approach a person who taught you forty four years back and somebody you never have talked after that?
“Is this Mrs. Lily George?”
“Speaking”
And all that awkwardness came over me again! “Errr… You will not recognize me but you were my class teacher in first grade in 1973”.
“Oh!”
I recognized that I needed to back up my point a little more. So, I told her about the school, the other teachers and my recollection of how she looked and most importantly that picture she took with us after gathering all the classmates during a Christmas get together.
The conversation, from then on flowed very fluidly. I got to know about her kids who are both live outside India. I got to know about how she has settled down in Ernakulam. But I was most disheartened to hear how she is having a tough time with her knees. And this is in spite of the fact she already had one surgery.
She took down my contacts. And as I spelt my name – something seemed to stir in her memory. “Rajib Roy. Wait a minute. Were you not the first boy in class? In fact you were the first boy all throughout school, right? I remember you very well. I had heard that you did very well in high school too”.
Well, that was really awkward and embarrassing. First, me doing well in studies had more to do with my relentless parents. I was an unwilling participant. But there were other first boys and girls too (We had many sections). So, I was not sure that was my calling card. But most of all, I was afraid that she might say “Hey! Later on I actually wanted to meet you once. Did you ever get the message?”.
Once I kept the phone down after promising to keep in touch with her, a flood of memories of my classmates from those days started floating thru my mind. Suddenly, I remembered something. I went upstairs, opened up the computer and after some search brought out a picture from that Christmas party of Miss George and all my classmates together. From Dec, 1973. I had digitized it and kept it thinking someday it might come come in handy.
My next mission is to get that picture to her somehow. You never know. My awkwardness knows no bounds. One of the India trips, I might just show up at Ernakulam and give her a printed copy of the picture and let her know that her teachings and guidance is going forty four years strong. With no apparent sign of abating!
What a great feeling it was to actually talk to somebody who is till date, my earliest teacher that I have been able to track!!!
[I am the kid with a squint in the left eye standing in the last row, third from the right of the picture]
18 April
2017
The search for my class teachers (home room teachers)
17 April
2017
Meeting Sri Ganesh
I was done with my India trip. 4 days with parents and 1 day meeting some folks from my past in Pune. All that was left was now a four hour drive to Mumbai airport and off to US I would be. Except that there was one more intersection point to be created.
I credit Sri Ganesh entirely for making this meeting happen. I had no time to get into the city. So, Sri Ganesh came to the airport to meet me!! That was awfully nice of him. We went in to a nearby hotel and grabbed a glass of wine and some light dinner.
Nearly 26 years back, I worked in the same office as Sri Ganesh in Mumbai. He was the head of Finances and Administration for our company. After 2 years, I was shipped out to the USA. He really had no reason to remember me much.
There are well networked people and there are well networked people. And then there is Sri Ganesh. Not only did he remember me, he remembered just about anybody and everybody I enquired after. Most of our conversation went something like this…
Me: “Do you remember the gentleman who was in charge of the library?”
He: “Charles D’Souza?”
Me: “Yes. He is absolutely one of the most genuine human being I have ever come across”.
He: “You want to talk to him?”
And then he would get Charles on the other line and have me to talk to him!!!
He seemed to have contacts with and the contacts of just about anybody who was there in that company that time. I was pretty impressed how well he remembered so many people. Someday, I hope to grow a memory like him.
Equally impressive was how many times he had set of offices and businesses from scratch in his career. Now, he devotes a lot of time to charitable causes.
Some of the perspectives he gave of life while reflecting on our past was eye opening. He seemed to always accentuate the positives in every change. It is a pity that I missed him when he was visiting Atlanta a few years back.
I am told attitudes can be contagious. I want some of his to rub off on me…
16 April
2017
Smart Alecs!!
That is what we were called – all the residents of our hostel “Alakananda” (shortened to Alak) in IIT Chennai. Don’t ask me why but all our hostels (that purportedly did not move) were named after rivers and our college buses (which, to the naked eye appeared to move at a ghastly gait) were named after mountains!!!
Thanks to Srinivas Aluru, this motley crowd of five Smart Alecs got together for a lunch and – as the other picture would suggest – some more!! You can always trust Srinivas to be the gracious host for these kind of things.
I saw both Ramesh Mantha and Ratnakar Rao after 28 years!! I can’t believe how Ratnakar remembers every person’s name and details from those years. Sometimes we would be like – “remember that guy – curly hair – good in hockey… ” and he would take another sip of his coke and go “his full name was so and so”. And all of us would go “how did you do that?”.
It was great to see Ramesh’s intellectual curiosity has not left him. And neither has the memory of losing the Sports Secy election to me by 4 votes 🙂 Truth be told he got elected the next year and was much more effective than me. We had played in multiple inter-IITs together and even won the 3-a-side volleyball tournament in college. I probably should mention that he was a regular player and I was a substitute in that team. But I got a gold medal that looked just like his, ha ha!!
It was great to see Ravi Ballamudi in my territory today. Last time I saw him was in a restaurant midway between Milwaukee and Madison on whatever that highway is in his home state of Wisconsin. Clearly, he had the most mature and astute observations of the evening!!
Can’t wait to see these guys again!!!
16 April
2017
A really cool guy!!
I had kept the last meeting in Pune for one of the most interesting persons I have known – Dhananjay Nene. We called him Danny and in fact, still do. We have crossed each other’s paths many many times.
First, we went to MBA school together in IIM- Ahmedabad. Both of us had a passion for computers and programming those days. We both joined the same company after our MBA. We even worked in the same project for a year and a half!!
We came to the USA literally in the same flight! We worked in the same office in US. We stayed in the same apartment complex in Florida. We shared the same rental car. And then we moved to Dallas together too!!
As if that was not enough, both of us were – and still are – married to Architects – Supriya and Sharmila!!!
Somewhere around 1995, we split ways. He quit the company and joined a large telecom company in the Northeast. I quit a few months later and joined a start up in Dallas itself.
I knew what I wanted to talk about when I met him. Of course, after I was done with enquiring about his family – especially his mom who won the battle against cancer a few year back. The first topic was how he chose to stay with programming. I moved on from programming at some point of time. One might even suggest, with some grain of truth, that my programming was bad enough that I made the cut to be a manager 🙂 But programming was Danny’s passion. He stuck to it.
Moment I saw him, I had flashbacks of furious typing on the keyboard (he was probably pushing 100 keystrokes per minute those days – we used to joke behind his back that approximately 50 of them were backspaces 🙂 ).
“Are you still typing that fast?”
“Faster. Now I use a mechanical keyboard”.
Of course, for me – a guy who pecks on the screen of an iPad to write something, it was a revelation for me that there were actually different kind of keyboards!!
“You are at a vantage point of having stuck to the same thing for nearly twenty five years. Few people can reflect on programming as a process like you can, I suspect. Forget the language and frameworks. I will not understand them any more. But tell me what beliefs have you formed around processes or teams after this long a time”.
“You are not going to like it. It is too contrarian”.
“Try me. I suspect that is the difference. It would take that much experience to negate common wisdom”.
“Well, I do not believe in separation of coding from testing”.
Essentially, he made a case of why creating a separation of labor between coding and testing passes the buck around. A coder has to be the tester. The creator has to guarantee the quality.
“But, what about inherent bias?”, I pressed on.
“Get a peer review done of your code”.
That did make sense to me. But I was not ready for the next one.
“I do not believe in timelines”, said he.
“What do you mean you do not believe in timelines?”
“Artificial timelines are what creates so many quality issues today”.
“But this is not a hobby, Danny. Business speaks in two languages – money and timeline. On what other basis do you create trust or benchmark of performance?”
“How scientific are those timelines? Aren’t those artificial to begin with? Somebody drew a line on the sand to release a product or launch a campaign etc etc – right? It is not like somebody is going to die or a competitor is going to take away the whole market next day, right?”
I will tell you what. I got his point that, essentially, all timelines are artificial. I also got the point that deadlines can drive taking shortcuts and slip ups on quality. But throughout his explanation, I have to admit, I struggled with how I can conduct business without timelines. I have also struggled with the essential definition of quality. Whose eyes is it in – the customer or the creator?
Anyways, this is what I have always admired about him. He has always chosen to take the road not so well travelled and that is why I absolutely love and respect his opinions.
Our final part of the session was talking about his other passion – motorcycles. He has four of them and does a lot of long distance motor biking in India. I hope some day to have one and do some pleasure riding here in America. I did pick up quite some safety tips and lessons for a hopefully-soon-to-be-beginner.
As you can imagine, with his intensely analytical way of looking at things, he gave some great insights into how riding a motorcycle needs you to train your brain differently. He brought it to life with a great example…
“Imagine a cow crossing the road… or in your case, a deer crossing your road. Your brain processes the animal as a danger and a threat. Your eyes are locked on the animal. Here is the thing. You will drive your motorcycle where your eyes are. You are going to run into the animal at that speed. Instead, you have to retrain your brain to focus on the escape route – essentially, the gap between the animal and the road. Preferably the gap that is behind the animal not in front.”
That actually made a lot of sense to me.
It was getting ready to take the four hour drive to Mumbai airport for me. I could have sat for another few hours and soaked in a lot of wisdom from Danny. But I had to take leave for him. Hope to get both of us and our wives together some time… just like the good old days when we had no kids!!
