Last night, Sharmila and I went out with a local Bengali couple – Soumya and Tumpa – for a couple of drinks. Not exactly being the party animal myself, I rarely get to see the local Bengali families other than occasions like Durga Puja and such. And my guess is that I have seen Soumya and Tumpa exactly twice every year – during Durga Puja and during Saraswati Puja and exchanged pleasantries. This Puja, we had agreed to meet up some time and go out.

It was a great evening. Unfortunately, I do not have any picture to post – which is a break away from tradition 🙂 Anyways, during our conversation, as is my wont, I was able to establish a very unique intersection point. Let me see if I can reconstruct the threads.

Thread 1:  Nearly seven to eight decades back when the British broke up India by religious lines before they left, there was a huge upheaval of violence between the two primary religions in that area: India, Pakistan and East Pakistan – which eventually became independent and is now known as Bangladesh. There were innumerable families that lost their homes and were uprooted from their country and had to take shelter in another country. I count many of their descendants as my friends and family today.

In any case, one such family moved from Jessore in Bangladesh and eventually settled in Bahrampur in West Bengal (India). Many years later, the lady of the house and her son – who was probably about 10-15 years old then – got into some legal dispute with the tenants in their house. That young son was none other than Soumya’s dad. Anyways, to seek legal help, they went to a well known lawyer in that town. The mom-son duo approached this aforementioned lawyer gentleman in his residence to seek help. This was circa 1950.

In a complete aside, the same lawyer had a nephew (younger brother’s son) who also lived in the same house. Now, hang on to that nephew for a second as I finish up the second thread.

Thread 2. As you know I grew up in a small sleepy town called Durgapur during my early childhood. Incidentally, there is a Mr. Ashoke Dubey from Durgapur who always takes me to task for calling Durgapur “sleepy” 🙂 In any case, his daughter – Aditi and I were classmates from very very early age and we have remained great friends till this day. And her dad – Mr. Dubey – was my local hero. He was one gentleman that I could always rely on to give me some unbiased advice. He was one of the top executives in Durgapur, but he would always find time for me if I needed to discuss something with him – even after I had long left Durgapur. Till this day, I try to meet him once a year when he comes to US or when I go to India.

Last night, after Soumya started talking about Gorabazar area in Bahrampur, something told me that we might have an intersection point here. A few calls to India and Soumya this morning later, it was established that Mr. Dubey is that same little nephew from the first thread!!!!!!

And get this – in 1985, Aditi, myself and a few of our common friends had gone to visit Mr. Dubey’s original home for a couple of days. YEP! It was the same house that Soumya’s grandma had gone to in 1950!!!

Who knew that I will be having drinks with somebody in 2014 whose grandma and I were at the same spot – separated by 35 years!! And we would find that out another 30 years later??

Serendipity!!!

A really long week. Have not felt this drained on a Friday morning in some time. Now on a coast to coast flight back…

Of course, this week’s travels had its own upsides… Meeting old friends that I had not seen in a long time as well as making new ones. And finding weird and funny road signs, restroom doors and so on 🙂

Speaking of new friends, one of the best places to make friends is at the hotel bar. But most of the time, instead of making friends with people in the bar, I somehow make friends with the bartender. It almost always starts by exchanging notes on interesting cocktails. And I always pick up a few more new recipes every time…

This week, I learnt a few from Joel Yacoby. He was at the Den in Portland. It was absolutely delightful spending time with this hard working young gentleman.

Learnt a very interesting drink from him – what he calls “Fiery Balls”!! And in the discussion of the “weirdest vodkas we have ever seen”, my bottle of Sriracha vodka (yes, there is a thing) won 🙂

Usually, it is I who remember people and then search the whole world for them, arrange for a meeting, get somebody to take a picture and then memorialize it in my blog with the backstory. Yesterday was a role reversal.
I was out with a friend at a bar and he had invited another friend of his who was visiting Atlanta to the bar. I am not going to bore you with all the details but some parts of the conversations were memorable. As I got introduced to Russell (that being his name), he surprised me by saying, “I know you. I have seen you before. Where have I seen you before?”.
I had not the faintest clue. But certainly not one to give up on a chance to extract some laughter, I asked him “Do you watch a lot of adult movies?”
15 seconds of pindrop silence.
Followed by three minutes of non-stop laughter 🙂
“Were you in Equifax”?
“Yes”
“Were you in i2 before that?”
“Yeah. How do you know that?”.
To cut it short, it became apparent that we had met before!!! And he used to be in Dallas area. (He is still in Texas). We frequented the same bars, restaurants and Starbucks often!!! One by one, we found out we had way too many common connections from the past. It was like we knew everything about the other person!! We were almost high fiving each other everytime we found one more connection – much to the disbelief of our common friend.
Russell pulled one back on me as I got ready to leave – “Say Hi to Mom”, he said.
I frowned for a bit. Then laughed all the way to car thinking about his reference to “Brother from Another Mother” 🙂