I know. That was a terrible pun. But that is exactly what Rupa said she was looking forward to if we could meet – some terrible puns. (Disclaimer – all my attempted puns are terrible). (and if you missed the context of the pun – the previous day I had met Roya Javadpour and Rupa did her Engineering from Jadavpur University)

The challenges were pretty steep though. She lived about a couple of hours away from my hotel. And I was in an event couple of hours further away from my hotel. She also had some work related appointments in the evening. And I knew I was going to get distracted by the beach and start running. We did promise though that one way or the other we were going to meet – regardless of how late it was.

And late it was. After the event ended, I had to drive up north – pulled over to put in a run – which meant that I had to find a LA Fitness to take a shower…. it was almost 8 PM when I finally got to see Rupa and Vishal.

Rupa was my classmate from MBA days. The last time I had seen her and Vishal was around 1996 – over 20 years back – when Sharmila and I were in California (we had no kids then) and we swung by Rupa’s house. Just to prove that old “Men are from Mars…. etc etc” saying, we exchanged notes and turned out I remembered the rental car color I drove to her house and she remembered exactly what food she had cooked!!! Sharmila and Natasha got a chance to see them last year when they were on a college visit. But for me it was over 20 years.

Here is the funny part. Or the not so funny part. I don’t think we had too many jokes or bad puns. We talked at length though. About a lot of things in life. About a common friend that Rupa and I had who is no more, about their days in CMC, about Mumbai days, about a company that Rupa and I had worked in, about our parents and so on, about the uncle and aunt she used to stay with for some time (and she had completely forgotten that I had paid her a visit there once)…

We were there for nearly three hours and I had not realized that everybody else had left!! We were the last ones and the staff was waiting for us to leave. I will tell you how engrossed I was in our conversation – I completely forgot to ask the staff to take a picture of us!!! That, for me is next to unthinkable. That is what Steve Jobs gave us an iPhone! Hello! So, next day, I had to plead Rupa to send me a picture of both of them. Without a picture, I cannot write stories 🙂

Some meetings really do not end even after you walk away. This was one of them. We promised to do a vacation together some time….

How do you teach Project Management for Supply Chain Management in a novel way? Dr. Javadpour’s approach was surely unique. She told her students that they were going to help a needy old couple by breaking down their bathroom and rebuild it and make it handicapped friendly. That started a 6 week long intense planning phase where the students had to do everything – from raising funds to understanding what construction was all about and then on the final day they reconstructed the bathroom in 6 hours flat from grounds up! The students were so taken in by the challenge of the project management of a real life project that most of them were working early morning to late night without being asked to. To the point that their other professors had to ask Roya what was she up to!! Apparently, she has offered that course 12 times in all (in CalPoly) and has been nationally recognized.

That was how our conversation started when I finally managed to meet up with her last week. First, she had to plough thru 2 hours of traffic. I gave her a way out but she insisted on meeting. We missed each other the last few times we tried. Roya and I worked in the same team in a supply chain company and frankly I cannot even remember when I saw her last – 2001?? After she left, I again got in touch with her thru FB much later.

And from her occasional posts, I realized that she followed an interesting and very adventurous life. I would call her to wish her a happy birthday and I would realize that she was in Vietnam or Thailand or Turkey and so on. In 2012, I suddenly got a message from her that she would be in India with a few of her students and wanted to know what should be visiting while there.

What I learnt last week was very interesting. Roya goes to all sorts of exciting places and explores them without much of planning from before hand. (I know, she is the one who was recognized nationally for her project management class 🙂 ). She buys one way ticket to a country and goes around exploring. During that process she crosses country boundaries and one fine day, when she thinks she has had enough, she buys a ticket to return. Another method I found was she would buy a one way ticket to country A and then a return ticket from country B without any prior plans of figuring out how to go from country A to country B.

I remember one of those birthday calls, she let me know that she could not get into Greece from Turkey (some visa related issues), so was trying to figure out How to return home!!

“So, what were you doing in India?”, I asked.
“Oh! We went to the Himalayas”.
“Trekking?”, I continued.
“No. We were there to build septic tanks and showers for a small village up in the mountains”.

I have to say – I was pretty impressed. I go to India four times a year and never ever have I attempted to build a septic tank!! 🙂

With the vast life experiences she has gained, I had to ask my inevitable question –
“So, what is the life lesson I can learn from you?”.
She thought for a second and said – “Enjoy the journey. Destinations are overrated. Life is all about the journeys to those destinations.”

Thank you Roya, for a wonderful evening. And thank you for taking the pains of tolerating two hours of traffic on 405.