Sharmila and I hail from Durgapur, a small town in India. There were two separate weddings we got invited to on the same day this weekend. Both of them were of kids of two friends of ours. One in Dallas and one in Atlanta. Both of them are also from the same small town of Durgapur. And get this… both their mothers and our mothers – all four of them were teachers in the same school!

Sharmila got to attend one of them and I attended the other one.

Funnily enough, at the wedding I attended (the Dallas one), I ran into a guy (Santanu) who was Sharmila’s classmate in engineering school and I further got introduced to his wife Tapasi. Who, we found out is the first cousin of our good friend (Sudipto) Ghose Sugo in Atlanta.

To roll back time a little, before I met Sudipto in Atlanta in 2007, I had actually first run into him in my senior year in residential school – way back in 1984. He was a junior in the same school and I used to meet him while visiting his roommate in his dorm. That other roommate was a junior of mine from Durgapur and we knew each other from the elementary school there.

To round up all the bizarre coincidences… that room mate junior I mentioned? Kuntal is his name and he lives in San Jose, California and yeah, he was also there in that wedding in Dallas!!

My friends from America are perfectly justified in thinking that it is a myth that India has 1.5 Billion people!!

Growing up in Durgapur, Avijit, Debatosh and I were a trio that were fairly inseparable throughout our school days. I got a chance to meet Avijit a couple of months back when he was visiting Dallas from Perth, Australia. Coincidentally, the other of the trio – Debatosh was also visiting Dallas this week from Bangalore, India. So, one more trip to Dallas had to be made,

The lady in picture is Sharmistha, my dad’s colleague’s daughter. Also my batch mate, we had become friends way before these two started going to the same engineering college and then dating each other. There is an infamous story about me sitting outside her house by the open drain while Debatosh went inside to talk to her and her parents. I will let Sharmistha tell you that story.

I think the three of us got under the same roof today after two decades or so.

In most cases where two of my friends have married each other, I get to be in a touch with them a little more… you know, there are two birthday calls a year that happen when I get to talk to both of them.

Except in this case, and keeping up with coincidences, both my friends were born on exactly the same day (and year)!!

It was a different kind of travel down nostalgia lane spending the day with them.