Morning (long) meetings with customer in Maryland, followed by an energizing lunch with a colleague and then a three hour drive to New Jersey for a customer dinner. I was exhausted last night after this. And my hotel was still over an hour drive away (I stayed next to the airport so as to catch an early flight today).

However, on the way, I knew was a very very old friend of mine and his wife – who I also knew independently. So, sure enough – never a person to miss an intersection point, I showed up at their house pretty late at 8:30.

And I am glad I did. It was two hours of non stop laughter and talking about common friends we knew. I have not laughed that much in a long time…. or had such great a time. Even their daughter got caught up in the action and stayed with us the whole time (which Jayeeta explained later has never happened before). In fact, the only reason the party broke up was that she still had some homework to finish for the next day!!!

You see the picture of the idol? That is an wooden idol carved by Partha. He has got this whole set up in the basement where he does wood work to relax. You see the table we are all sitting at? That is a production from his relaxation.

Still cannot believe how much fun I had in those two hours. And then on my drive back, I realized something. The three of us have had a lot of common friends … we have talked so many times over the phone… we almost lived in the same city some time back…. Found out that my close fiend and Chalupa member Sid’s grandpa’s sister’s granddaughter is Jayeeta!

And yet… till last night… Partha and I had ever met each other only ONCE – for about five minutes … in Durgapur station waiting for Bidhan Express in October 1983 … we were introduced by either Subrata Kolay or Debotosh Paul, I cannot remember!

And Jayeeta? This is the second time I met her in my life – first time when she and her parents came to visit my roommate Pratik Pal in my residential school days in 1984 and then a couple of years later at the same roommates’ house in Durgapur where I had gone to visit his dad Dr. Dilip Pal who had recently broken his leg…

Over 31 years later… meeting somebody only the second or third time in your life…. there was no way you could have guessed it from the amount of fun we had together!!!

Met Aluru in Atlanta after 25 years!! We lived in the same hostel (dorm) and both did Computer Science together. Last saw each other in early half of 1989!! It was absolutely fascinating catching up with him.

I always love catching up with my computer science friends. Partially because, I had a lot more interest in actual application development than research. Thus, unlike most of my classmates, I did not come to US to study further in Computer Science. But I am absolutely elated by the unbelievable achievements of my classmates – one of them is in charge of Google Search, one of them is in charge of Microsoft Bing, four of them are top notch professors in the best universities, few of them have their own very successful companies…

The life story of Aluru was no less fascinating. The thing that intrigued me was the fact that mid way in his career, he switched to a whole new stream – Computing Biology. Now, you will be totally excused for not knowing this – but I sucked at Biology. I was never good at remembering things. And history and biology needed me to remember things. But I was okay with Math. Dropped biology and took up statistics in my eleventh grade (junior year).

You can imagine my disbelief when he started talking about math and biology being the same at some level. For me, I topped out that level when I could say “A frog has four legs”. That is really how close I could put biology and math together 🙂

But I was even more awestruck when he started explaining to me about the genome mapping and splicing of the DNA. Now, I am really really worried that my behavior can be explained by a bunch of algorithms! Actually, what I am really afraid of is that Aluru is soon going to meet my wife. She is undoubtedly going to ask him to reprogram those algorithms for me. And I am intimately aware of the fact that he got a Computer Science degree – so he must be knowing a thing or two about programming!!!

Aluru, it was great catching up with you after a quarter century….

In 1983, I met a guy called Manajit in my junior year (11th grade). Last I saw him was in 1985. Our paths ever since could not have been more different. 29 years later, found out that he lives in Denver. Was waiting to find an opportunity to meet him some day. Today was that day !

Saw him after almost three decades over dinner this evening. It was mind blowing remembering those dorm (hostel) days (we were in a residential high school) and he reminded me of at least half a dozen friends that I had nearly forgotten about ! Looks like more intersection points for me to seek.

I was certainly exhilarated to hear his life story. Served as a reminder to me that hard work can overcome most setbacks and obstacles. Good to see him succeed so much. Hard working people deserve the best!