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!!