First evening of spring break vacation. We got a chance to catch up with Sameer and Rajol. We used to live in Dallas many moons back and enjoyed quite a few sugar cane dipped Mojitos together at the Mi Cocina on Tollway. Eventually, they left for the west coast and we, for the east coast.

And we got together again after quite some time last night. Instead of Mojitos, it was some nice wine and the conversations spanned from raising kids to comparative religions. By the time, we got up, it was 3AM our time (midnight for them!)

In my near quarter century of professional life, Sameer has been one of those that has absolutely marveled me with his IQ level and work ethic. And his prowess over everything Excel. I think he can make Excel make coffee for him in the morning.

Which brings me to the story that we recollected from the long past. There was a time – probably a dozen or so years back – when Sameer and I spent quite some time in Munich working on supply chain problems of a leading semiconductor company there. After long days, on our train ride back from office to the hotel, I used to bring out the newspaper of that day and start doing the sudoku problem published there.

After a couple of days, we were stuck on one particular problem, when Sameer fished his laptop out of his bag and fired up Excel. I continued to struggle with the problem and he kept on twisting and turning his Excel. The following couple of train journeys it was pretty much the same scene. Then on the third day, he declared that he had worked all the kinks out. Apparently, he had a written up some Excel sheet and macros that would solve a sudoku.

I fed that day’s problem to this sheet and Voila! It had the results ready. I tried pushing it to the limits that day by withholding a few digits. The sheet would promptly tell me what my options are !! I was thrilled and somewhat incredulous. But it was very difficult for me to test it out – since making my own test cases would mean I would have to create my own Sudoku puzzles.

Next morning, I asked the hotel folks if they had some old newspapers. Unfortunately they did not. So, for the next few days, on our trip back, we would sit down in the train, I would type in the problem and we would make sure that the answer matched. And then for the rest of the journey we were forced to talk to each other 🙂

After a few more days of testing, the whole fun of Sudoku went away. The sense of “Oh! It can be done easily” seeped into me so deep that ever since that day, I have never touched a Sudoku puzzle again ever. Nowadays, if I ever get the urge to look at one, my immediate reaction is “I hope have I saved his original Excel file somewhere”.

The good news is I found him to be as sharp as ever. So, as long as I do not lose his phone number, I am sure I can ask him to recreate the file again 🙂

One more in the series of India trip this time. It is more of a non-post than a post.

I am the last one who is at a loss for words. Right words, maybe. Words? Never 🙂 And yet, I have failed three times to lend words to my feelings of meeting Moniruddin (Khokon) and his family. You may remember how my first friend of life suddenly vanished from my life one fine day without much of a notice. And then how that started a very very long search to find my first friend of life. I distinctly remember the frustration and fear I had some days that I probably will never get a chance to see him again.

And yet, I did manage to see if – thru a lot of perseverance and a very well timed encouragement from Sharmila to keep looking. I had poured out my heart explaining the search and that first phone call I ever made with him after I was able to locate him.

Then, in a few weeks I actually visited him and his mom. My mind was an absolute etch-a-sketch of emotions – of actually getting to see in flesh and blood somebody that I had searched for a long time, somebody who was my first playmate in life, his mom who took care of me so much and that I had missed the chance to see his dad by a few years who simply used to dote on my the-then-very-young brother. For a couple of weeks, I had attempted to write out the experience of meeting him. Eventually I gave up. I was getting too overwhelmed to find any words.

Then I visited him again a few months later. This time, his mom and I sat down and talked endlessly about our lives. I know I had a lot to write about. I was not wanting in materials. And yet again, I could not find a way to express my feelings properly.

This time, I took my parents with me. It was almost like an action packed movie. My parents were so thrilled to see Moniruddin that they forgot to even walk to his house. They stood near where we had parked the car (See pic) and kept talking excitedly till my brother reminded them that his mom was probably waiting for us.

My mom and his mom were very close. And they got to see each other after a long long time. For the first few minutes they could not even talk without holding each other (see pic) – probably still not believing that they actually got to see each other. Unfortunately for all of us, uncle was not there to join in the get together. But you can see in the picture how my dad and my friend were having a great time together.

Now I know why cannot ever write a good post on meeting my long lost friend who appeared again. It is that last picture. It is that poignancy of his mom standing at the door of her house every single time silently. Every time I start writing I start imagining what must have been going thru her head – perhaps wondering whether she will see each other again? And that is the exact question I carried with me almost my entire life.

I think I need more time to express what it really means to get back your very first friend of your life.

This one has an intriguing twist at the end…

Having already met two friends from school days, I still had some time left before my flight was scheduled to leave Dubai. Fortunately, Shirshendu had said he would be free after office. That was the opportunity I needed. We got together at a bar near the airport for a couple of hours. We had been trying to co-ordinate a meeting for a long time.

Of course, it always starts with updating each other on our old common friends. And we had a lot of those to catch up on. And there was the Kalyani connection – his sister and his parents (separately) moved to Kalyani. As did my sister and my parents (separately).

Then we got to know about each other’s families and how he moved to Dubai to sell books and eventually worked his way into a successful executive in the construction business. I also learnt about his mom today. At the age of sixty five or so, she decided that she needed to learn something new. So, she took classes in recitation (elocution, reading poetry or as Bengalis would say “abritti”). Here is a stunner – within a short period of time she excelled in it and has given multiple performances. She now performs in TV too!!! Evidently, nobody has heard her complaining! She always has a solution ready before she articulates a complaint. I absolutely need to meet her. And probably take my mom with me too 🙂

If you saw us for those two hours, going thru the updates of friends of different stages in life – early school, late school, college, work etc etc – one by one in great detail (including the names of minibuses one of our friends took to meet his girlfriend – yet another common friend of ours) you could be easily forgotten for not realizing one small detail. And that twist is that you would have never guessed that Shirshendu and I had never met each other ever. Till today!! We never studied together in the same school at the same time. We were never classmates in our entire life.

But we had a zillion common friends. And through those friends, we were always deeply aware of each other. It is like we ran in parallel lines intersected by many many friends at the same time but our lines never intersected!

It was great meeting Shirshendu for the first time and catching up on all those old friends…

That is how my friend from school days Sanjay Sethi wrapped up our meeting. I had not met him and Saji Abraham ever since we finished our tenth grade. I had a thirteen hour layover in Dubai. That was as good a reason as any to catch up with two friends that I had not seen for 32 years!! Saji was kind enough to pick me up and drop me off.

The three of us went thru the whereabouts of about half our entire class (we had a total of 103 students). What was most heartening for me to see was how two of my friends from very early days have become such great successes professionally and personally. One has a thriving business here in Dubai and the other has globe trotted thru his entire high flying career in the banking sector. But above all, they always have time for our old school mates.

Got some real inspiration talking to them today.

Sanjay’s description aptly described how we felt walking away from that coffee place….We missed Sanjeev Gupta – the other high flyer today….