… but running into old friends continues! Just ran into another colleague from the yesteryears in this far corner of Italy! Josh reminded me that the last time he saw me was in a meeting room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I am really liking this whole phenomena of Intersection Points and my sheer luck in running into them…
Flew in with the family to Milan and then a few hours of drive to Bologna. And then another half an hour drive to the top of the mountains in Varignana to reach an old castle recently converted to a beautiful resort.
Our other vacation friends – Sunil and family from Dallas – reached us later in the evening. After walking around the beautiful property, taking in the beauty of the valleys from the mountain top, we settled down at the restaurant bar to try out some Italian wine.
As unlikely as it might sound, I thought I spotted somebody – even in this really distant spot – that I might have met before. After excusing myself from my table, I walked to the other table and politely asked if I could interrupt. And that is when the yellings started!! There was not one but two friends from my past who were having a company meeting there!! Made a few new friends too!!
Remember how I met Cindy in a remote resort in a bar in a small place in Costa Rica? Or how I ran into Suman from school days while laying by the pool at a resort south of Kolkata? It appears, that streak continues – this time with Patricio Remon and his team!!!
About a year back, on July 15, 2014, sitting by the pool chatting with my visiting in laws, I had made a remarkable discovery. A lady we knew – I had never met but Sharmila had – who had lived in Atlanta and Dallas (just like us but we did not overlap) and who used the same nanny that we had for Nikita when we left Dallas and was a close friend of my closest friend (Amitesh) in Atlanta – turned out to be a relative of mine. Very distant though, I must say. I think my father in law’s sister’s husband’s brother’s son’s daughter is Bidisha. I had called her up that day to let her know about my discovery and she had dubbed it Cosmic Connection.
This Sunday, I finally managed to meet her at Amitesh’s house!!!
If you recollect a blog post from a couple of weeks back, you might remember that after some frantically running around “Beeshey Josthhi”, my mom finally settled that I should call her to wish her on her official birthday and not her real birthday (Jun 3). A few days later, when I was in India visiting my parents, my niece (who lives downstairs from my parents) had expressed great curiosity to understand why there were two different calendars. I took her thru how there are actually many different calendars and how they all originated.
Not sure what she got out of that lecture on “Calendars 101” session, but it now appears, she had decided that she was going to celebrate her grandma’s birthday on June 3. Now, in most households, this would be a very simple thing. Not in mine!!
First and foremost, my niece got my sister to buy a new saree for my mom. (which is what she is wearing in the picture). When my mom eventually realized this, it led to her berating my dad about why they should have bought a new dress for my niece. Totally confused, my father went – “But this is your birthday”. My mom’s reaction? “Taito. Ami pujor saathey guliey felchhi”. Meaning “Of course! I am confusing this with Pujo” (which is a festival around October timeframe when it is customary to exchange gifts of new clothes with your family members). Did I mention that this is the first time ever my mom has been confronted with the prospect of having to celebrate her own birthday? 🙂
Second, my mom had serious logistics worries. When I called her u, after initially gushing about how my niece had said she was going to get a cake for her, she abruptly stopped. “Ki holo” (what happened?) I asked her. Once she explained what was bothering her, I could not help laughing out loud. I literally had to mute my phone. In Bengali she asked me if she could request me to ask my niece not to put any candle on the cake. Frankly, I was a little curious. My first thought was that maybe she thought there are animal products in wax or something. But no! Her worry was that my niece was going to waste a lot of money buying 71 candles!! And that to accommodate so many candles she was going to waste more of her parents’ money buying a very big cake. After I unmuted my phone, I told her “Aajkaal chhoto chhoto mombaati paoa jay” (these days, you can get very small candles). She seemed to have been pacified.
Next day when I called her (obviously after all the celebrations), she was absolutely excited about candles. As you can see in the picture, my niece simply got two candles – one shaped like “7″ and another shaped like “1″. Now this was a concept that completely escaped my mom till she saw it. When she saw it, she was totally taken in by humankind’s power of innovation. She spent five minutes trying to explain to me over the phone that she was talking about two candles only – apparently worried that I might not be able to understand the concept with my little brain. “Kintu kirokom kayeda korechhe jaanis?”. I, of course, played along. At some point of time, I was going to mention to her that we have actually sent people to the moon and brought them back – maybe this is not half as exciting. But it was her birthday. Surely, you understand.
The previous day, when my niece let me know everything was all set, I called up my brother and told him the whole story. His own family was visiting his inlaws – so I proposed that he go over to my dad’s place and add to the confusion. Which he promptly did. Took a train and in about couple of hours was at my parents’ place. That way, he is just like me. Needs the flimsiest of excuses to go do something crazy.
The next day (actual birthday), when my dad woke up, you can only imagine his confusion. His younger son was there unexpectedly, there was a cake on the table and some general chaos was reigning supreme. Eventually, he got the hang of it. And in a proof that he is starting to get a little better, he got excited enough to he get up from his bed, put a shirt on and sat down on the sofa declaring he had to witness the first ever birthday celebrations of mom. Judging my his face, he seems to have made a lot of progress from a week back when I saw him last.
Just about when I was starting to conclude the phone call once my mom was satisfied that I had internalized the concept of how to get “71” with only two candles, she started explaining another birthday concept she was afraid I might be clueless about. From the picture you can see that my niece had not spared her grandmom from smearing her face with some cake. And that is what my mom then launched on to explain to me. “Khetey-o hobey, abaar maakhtey-o hobey”, she explained. (You have eat some and then smear some!!). I was like – “Really? Next time I leave food on the plate and you yell at me, we will talk.” In reality, I wished her again and then let her know that I needed to get back to work. Somewhere, inside I was starting to worry that she might start on the general concept of balloons and how they are an integral part of birthday celebrations.
I wanted to keep that for today’s call 🙂
It was last Thursday. My brother and I had already been on the road for about nine hours. We had visited an uncle of mine who has lost his power of speech, a couple of friends and their parents (you have read about them before) and dropped a fountain pen for a teenager son of a classmate of mine (I had promised him this when I had found out that he loves fountain pens just like I do). Amidst all this, we had to deal with my brother’s car misbehaving. But before heading back to dad and mom in Kalyani, we had one last (sixth, if you are counting) intersection point left for the day.
About a couple of years back, I had dug up Debasish Chakraborty from my school days. You might vaguely remember he, my brother and I sitting down by the street side right outside his office in Salt Lake in Kolkata and catching up on each other’s life over a couple of glasses of tea from the stall on the street. Eventually, I became Facebook friends with his wife Baishali and his twin daughters Tupur and Tapur (Debatri and Bijetri – although I am sure I have gotten the sequence wrong 🙂 ).
Other than the Knowers in Atlanta, I think that is the only family where all the family members are my FB friends. Tupur and Tapur are almost always guaranteed to try my puzzles and more often than not crack them. And they would sometimes send me math or physics problems that they or their school teacher might have gotten stuck with. If my memory serves me right, I had solved each one of them for them and their teacher except one. Which, nobody knows the answer of. (I am positive the question was not correctly framed).
In any case, all thru these days, I had never managed to make some time to visit them physically. Not anymore! I did show up – pretty late though – that evening at their house. Spent quite some time with the twins and Baishali and Debasish. The twins are amazing. It is like they think exactly the same way. They were even finishing off each other’s sentences 🙂
There was something very unique about this visit. As far as I can remember – and I am 99% sure of this – this is the first time I had a drink (of the alcohol variety) at any friend’s house in India. Most of the times, I meet my friends outside their home – unless I am visiting their parents too. In which case, not a chance of having alcohol (you might remember how I have wine at my own parents’ home 🙂 ).
This was an exception though. We had to toast to the outstanding (and almost identical) results the twins had achieved in the just announced ICSE exams!!! Cheers to that!!!
No trip to Durgapur, however short it might be, is ever complete without saying Hi to my long time friend Baisakhi and her family. In the whirlwind trip to Durgapur this time which was mostly to visit four sets of folks in seven waking up hours, I was able to squeeze in about half an hour or so to check on her family. I did show up very early at her house – dragging her husband out of his peaceful slumber on a Sunday morning 🙂
Like every time, quite some time was spent with her son Kintu. We talked about his latest toys – he is a fanatic when it comes to cars and just about any vehicles. He gave me a demo of a car pound as you can see in the picture. The chat with Baisakhi and Sagar was the usual. Mostly about work, family, friends and the terrible heat wave in India.
Long after I had left their home – as we were speeding down Durgapur Highway to Kolkata, I received a Whatsapp message from Baisakhi’s phone. It was actually from her son – you can see the message in the picture.
I don’t recollect exactly when but when he was very young, during my trips to Baisakhi’s house, I used to teach him new, silly stuff – you know like fist bumping, high fiving and such. Somewhere, it became a tradition for us – we would high five each other during every visit of mine. There was nothing particular to celebrate really – just high fiving for high fiving’s sake.
And this time, it completely slipped my mind 🙁 The message from him says “Rajib uncle, I forgot to high five you this time”!
I was absolutely thrilled to get the message. I realized how important that small gesture is to him. Someday, when he becomes as old as I, he will probably remember me as the “high five uncle” 🙂 But I also felt terribly guilty that as an adult I failed him on remembering our tradition. That was my job – not his 🙁
I will have to re-visit him soon…
I waited gingerly after ringing the bell, not knowing what to expect. I was starting to get tired too. This was my fourth stop in a whirlwind 12 hour trip to create as many intersection points as I could that day before going back to dad. Usually my intersection points are about re-uniting with somebody from the long past or meeting complete strangers on the road. This one was a little different. I went to meet them. But I had never met them before. All that had happened was (you can read it here: http://www.rajibroy.com/?p=8180 ) when I met Sudeshna (again for the first time in my life – although we found out she was my sister’s classmate) in Houston, we realized that her parents used to live next door to my in laws. When she called her parents up in front of me, I took the phone away from her and talked to her mom to find out exactly which house they used to live in. And in the process, I promised her mom that I would come by and meet her next time I was in Kolkata.
Eventually, auntie (Sudeshna’s mom) opened the door. I started explaining myself
“Amakey chinben na. Amar naam Rajib Roy”. (‘You won’t know me. My name is Rajib Roy’)
“Rajib to? Na chenar ki aachhey? Ei sedin to katha holo”, she put me at ease. (‘Rajib, right? Why would I not know? We talked just the other day’).
That was all I needed to feel welcome. I opened my shoes and and went straight to the big sofa in the living room. Uncle came out and after the initial pleasantries, drew up a chair very close to me and said “Ami kaaney kom shuni. Tomar khub kaachhey esey boschhi”. (‘I am little hard of hearing. If you don’t mind, I will sit very close to you to talk to you’). There was a very genuine level of sincerity and eagerness to chat that came thru immediately.
And chat we did for forty five minutes about our times in Durgapur, their visits to US, life in US, their daily routine in Kolkata and all things sundry.
Forty five minutes later, I got up to take leave. “Bongo sommelon-e aaschho to?”, asked auntie. I was a little startled. First, as a background, “Bongo sommelon” is the largest gathering of Bengali diaspora in US and Canada. Any Bengali worth his or her bite of Hilsa fish makes a beeline to this event (I am not sure of the frequency – every year? other year?) from North America. With their resplendent clothes and glittering jewelry in tow!
Turns out they will be visiting U.S. (Houston) soon and was enquiring if I would be at Bongo Sommelon (which is in Houston this year in July) like them. Disappointment was writ large on her face when she realized that I have never been to any Bongo Sommelon and that I am not in a hurry to change that trend 🙂 I am hoping against hopes that she is not going to hold that against me from now on 🙂
As reported back in July 2013, our (brother, brother in law and self) regular evening intake of OH molecules is forcibly moved to the top of the water tank on the roof of our parents’ building. Even if my parents did sneak up to the roof, they simply cannot scale the sides of the tank to get on top of it. Did I mention drinking alcohol is a taboo in our house? 🙂
