You might remember from my old posts that a trip to Durgapur is never really quite complete till I have met Utsab. For the last two years, I had to suspend it unfortunately, due to Covid reasons. We restarted the practice again today.

Like old times, both he and I had to fend off his mom’s (my friend from yesteryears – Baisakhi) complaining about Utsab not studying and then we went off to more interesting topics – like Utsab’s fascination and vast knowledge about cars!

In the meantime, Utsab has grown by nearly six inches and towers over me now!! And he is thin as a rail – just like I used to be at his age!!

I had tried multiple times to meet this gentleman – who was my classmate in middle school – without any success. In fact, we used to use the same school bus. This time though, I was more successful!

I last saw Soumitra in 1983. That is a good four decades back. He left for Kolkata St. Xavier’s and I left for Narendrapur RKM. And that was that. Till today.

His face has remained pretty much like I remember him from those days – full of the innocent boy vibes. We talked about the slightly greenish grey shorts he used to wear to school (most of us wore slate grey). I remembered the one time I had gone to meet him and he was not there. I met his mom and had chatted with her till he came back home. We lost her about two decades back but I was able to surprise him by describing in fair amount of detail how his mom looked. I wish I had gotten a chance to see her one more time.

It was great to catch up with this really good soul after so many years! Hopefully I will see him a few more times…

You might remember by young friend from a previous post. I met him in April last year and was fascinated by the story of his kidnapping and how he escaped. Spent some time with Vivek again in this trip. Was encouraged to hear that he is embarking on a new career soon. All the best, “Nicky”!!

A few years back, Shamita had joined one of those social media groups that I was part of. Now, this group was for our elementary school where I studied from first grade to fourth grade. For some reason, I just could not remember Shamita. So, I called her up one day to see if I could jog some old memories. I started by asking her the various teachers’ names who would have taught her. The trouble was I could not relate to any of those names either. And I am pretty sure I remember each and every teacher’s name from the school.

Eventually we sorted it out. She never went to that school. Somebody had invited her to the group by mistake and after looking at some of the other girls’ names, she assumed this was her high school group. We had a good laugh.

She left the group. But of course, I became friends with her. Every birthday, I would chat with her and keep up with her family as they moved from Bhubaneswar back to Durgapur. She had read my blog and had let me know that her husband is equally quirky. Apparently, he too pursues new hobbies from time to time. She called it “keragiri”. We had agreed that I should meet her husband some time.

Which is what I did today. After catching up with all his “keragiri”s (right now, he is into cultivating orchid flowers), I asked Somnath (her husband) – “So, how did you guys meet each other?”

“Oh! it was a cross connection. Like the way you guys have become friends,” he said.
“What?”

So, after about 10 minutes of being totally bemused, this is what I was able to put together. This goes back to 1980. Some of you who lived in Durgapur those days might remember those black rotary phones at home. Life was simple enough that all phone numbers were of 4 digits. The numbers were easy to remember but the calls were difficult to make. There would be a lot of static, accidental three way connections and cross connections which would simply go to the wrong person.

It was during such a cross connection on an otherwise innocuous phone call that Somnath had placed, he found Shamita on the other side. They had no idea who the other person was. Shamita was barely in her 8th grade. Apparently, he liked her voice. And they got chatting. And Shamita gave him her number. (You cannot obviously rely on cross connections in aa deterministic fashion 🙂 )

And that is how their love affair started and continues to this day!!

Pretty crazy how mistaken identities / connections can lead to life time friendships. And more!!