Usually I am the one who gets helped by others in my journey to reconnect with everybody who has touched my life in the past. And in that journey, sometimes I find myself inadvertently helping others get reconnected. Do you remember how this week I got to talk to Preeti – my friend from elementary school days – thanks to Bidisha? My blog on that incident and thanking Bidisha thru it caught the eye of Rita – somebody I met for the first time in my life less than two weeks back.

Want to take a guess what happened next?

Why don’t I let Bidisha tell you the story herself…

[copying this from Bidisha’s FB entry….]

“Quid pro quo?

Today I received a friend request from Rita Chakravorty It took me a few minutes to remember who she is. And boy, it did open up the floodgates of memories from way back in 1995 from our time in Athens, GA. We remembered the evenings spent at Parna mashi and Kanu mesho’s home chatting the night away on music, literature, art and all other topics dear to Bengalees! We still remember many of Satya da’s jokes that Neil now shares with our friends. I remember Rita di’s beautiful sketches framed and mounted on Parna mashi’s wall, especially the bengali woman chopping a fish with a traditional knife (boti), and the manual rickshaw puller that always reminded me of Kolkata.

Once Rita di and I started furiously exchanging messages to catch up on yester years, I realized how she suddenly found me out. It was none other than Rajib Roy who helped us to re-connect! It was just yesterday when he was thanking me for connecting him with Preeti Saini Ajmani after 40 plus years. And now it seems like today is his turn for payback. 😉

Serendipity lives! I am glad that we have helped each other to find lost friends. Perhaps, this is our gift exchange program for Christmas 2015. 🙂

Happy holidays everyone! “

Happy holidays, indeed!

This is serendipity heaped upon more serendipity.

To begin with, I have no reason to meet Bidisha. The only reason I knew of her was that when we left Dallas, we referred our nanny to her. And that was all I knew till last summer when I brought my inlaws to visit us, while chatting with them, it came out that a Bidisha who lives in US is somehow related to them. A few probing questions later, turned out it was the same Bidisha! When I called her up, she made me promise her that I would visit her house next time I was in Dallas.

A year later, during this Thanksgiving, I did take my family to Dallas and Sharmila and I visited Bidisha and her family at her home and had a very nice evening. Speaking of serendipity, we were talking about how we landed in Atlanta eight years back and how Bidisha had landed in Georgia (in UGA in Athens) over twenty years back. Oh! Yeah! Forgot to mention – she lived in Georgia before we moved here. While talking about all the friends she had in Georgia, she talked about the first good friend she made in UGA – somebody called Preeti who had invited her to stay with her for a couple of weeks as she got herself familiarized with this country after leaving India.

Immediately, she turned to her husband and said “I am going to try and meet Preeti when I go to Minneapolis next week”.

Her husband, Neil’s response: “That would be cool. Tell them Hi”.

At this point I had no reason to butt in. But then again, that would so not be me 🙂 There is a Preeti Saini from my first grade that I have been trying to locate for a looooong time. If anybody every mentions about a Preeti our age group, they were guaranteed a question from me.. and that is what I asked:

Me: “What is her last name?”

Bidisha: “Preeti Ajmal”. And that is where the conversation should have ended. This once, I pestered on.

Me: “Not Preeti Saini?”

Bidisha (after a second): “You know, I think she is Preeti Saini Ajmal”. I got excited!!

Me: “From Durgapur?”. What is the chance I might have finally found her?

Bidisha: “No. Jamshedpur”. My hopes were dashed.

Just to hang on to some hope, I asked her – “Can you ask her if she was ever in Durgapur. And if so, did she go to Benachity Junior High School?”

And that was that. I had forgotten about that conversation altogether.

Last night, I had finished a business dinner and as I got into the car, I noticed that there was a Facebook notification. It said that Bidisha had tagged me in a picture. I assumed it was one more of those millions of pictures she posted in FB when we were in Dallas last week. Yes, if you ever wanted to meet somebody more active than me on FB, you should allow me to introduce you to Bidisha 🙂 I did not even open the post thinking I would do that later. Plus I needed to use my phone as a GPS.

Later, after I had checked into the hotel and finally retired in my bed, I went thru the post. It said “Tagging you because I did ask my friend Preeti if she ever lived in Durgapur before moving to Jamshedpur. Indeed, she did! So perhaps this is the same Preeti Saini you knew way back in Durgapur.”

The next half an hour was a blur. All I know was that I had jumped out of my bed. I had three streams of conversations going on at the same time. I had Bidisha on the phone. I was feverishly responding to FB messages from Preeti on Bidisha’s post. And I was at the same time keeping our WhatsApp group posted that I might have finally found out Preeti. Friends from Dubai, India were all popping up on WhatsApp asking me to get her to join the group.

Preeti, though was struggling to remember me. I was throwing classmates’ names after names to see if I could jog her memory. One of them stuck – Nishi Jain! I think she was starting to believe that I was not a weirdo. I was dying to talk to her but it was too late at night for her. Finally, I knew how to establish my credentials to somebody who could not remember me. I went to my iCloud picture library, downloaded my first grade picnic picture and sent it to her. And asked her “Are you not the third girl from the left in the front row?”.

That did it! Apparently,even she had difficulty recognizing herself but her husband looked at all the kids and immediately picked her out. Her kids were thrilled since they had never seen a picture of her from that era. Finally, I went to bed letting her know that I would call her the next day.

After finishing my work at Boulder, CO, on my drive to the Denver airport today, I finally talked to Preeti! Last time I did so in 1975 when she left us after third grade! 40 years back!!!

I can’t wait to visit Minneapolis now!

On my flight back to Atlanta now, I am just struck by the serendipity of it all. I have no idea how a simple discussion with my inlaws came up with the name Bidisha. There are so many Bidishas. Not sure why pushed them for more info. Not sure why it had to be the only Bidisha I know! Not sure why she mentioned to her husband in our presence last week that she would be visiting Preeti. Not sure why I kept pressing even after her first answer was “Ajmal”. Or why I did not give up when she told me she was from Jamshedpur? How come she remembered to ask although I had completely forgotten?

And yet for all that string of coincidences, apparently, I missed two easy leads. Preeti is very very close to the wife of a friend of mine from a prior company and we are in touch with each other very regularly!! Also, she is very close to another collegemate of mine. We are FB friends too! I had no idea!!

Who says life is not beautiful?

Thus spaketh Amelia Barr – the British novelist from the 1800s. In my own personal voyage, fashionably called “life”, I met a fascinating person this evening that reminded me so much about Amelia.

Sharmila, the kids and myself were a little early at the Dallas airport for our flight back home to Atlanta. We checked into the Skyclub. The kids settled down – predictably near power outlets and after securing the Wifi password from the lady at the front. Sharmila and I settled down at a random table and I went to the bar to grab a drink for us. At the bar, a familiar scenario played out. The lady asked me what she could get me. I said, as is my wont :-), “a million dollars”. Once she picked herself up after laughing her heart out, we started getting to know each other a little more.

For the next half an hour so (fortunately the bar on a late Saturday evening was not particularly crowded) I got to know Nancy Towne’s life journey a little more. Nancy is about five years older than my mom in India. And somewhere she mentioned “… when I came to this country….” A myriad of questions later, I figured out that Nancy was born in Copenhagen (we exchanged notes from the only trip I made to Denmark) and then moved to the USA. She has lived in many countries – thanks to her husband’s job in the Oil and Gas sector.

She had retired some time back. But then she lost her husband five years back. To keep herself productive and occupied, she joined as a volunteer at the DFW airport. Eventually, she took up a job and is now at the Delta Skyclub. What I was struck by was her zest for life and cheerfulness. She said she picked up this job so as to meet more people. She said that she has met some of the best people in her life in the airport and at the Skyclub.

After chatting with her for about half an hour, I called Sharmila and asked her to take a picture of us. If any of you are traveling Delta to or thru DFW, don’t forget to drop by the Skyclub and say Hi to this gem of a human being. Regardless of your disposition, you will come out very cheerful!

As an epilogue: Nancy lost her daughter this year to cancer. Coincidentally enough, Amelia had lost her husband and most of her kids to untimely deaths…