Early September, I called up Atanu to wish him a very happy birthday!! After 1983, I had neither seen him nor talked to him much. A few years back, I got his phone number from another friend and called him up. And jotted down his birthday. Ever since, at least once a year, I get to talk to him and not much more. Except, this year when we talked, we wondered if it would be possible to see each other after so many years.

Atanu was one of our “bhalo chhele” – which in Bengalispeak is, a meritorious student. After school, he went on to pursue his higher education in medical science and is now an eminent doctor in my birth state specializing in pediatrics. Anyways, I was excited at the possibility of meeting him – although I was not sure logistically I could fit it in. My best shot was to go to Asansol – a town I have never been to – about forty five minutes away from Durgapur after I met my gall-bladder-less nephew. (see a blog from a couple of days back).

Eventually, my brother and I did show up at Atanu’s bungalow inside ESI hospital. Again, he looked exactly the way I remembered him from 1983!! I could have easily picked him out in a crowd. Since he, my brother and myself were from the same middle school, we spent some time remembering our old teachers and school. 

And then we got introduced to his wife. What I did not know till then is that his wife was our batchmate too. And that she and I had studied in the same school – twice – but not in overlapping timeframes. However, we immediately found common friends from the past. The most exciting moment was when she started talking about her best friend from Bidhan School (eleventh and twelfth grade) that she had not been able to track her down for some time. Want to guess who she was? The same Aditi that I met after forty one years just a couple of days back!! What is the chance of that? I was immediately able to put them together thru the phone lines.

Ah! The joys of networking!!!

This was amply rewarding in itself. However, the bonus came when Atanu mentioned that another friend of ours from school days – Suranjit was also in town. I think I knew he was in Asansol but I never put two and two together. A few phone calls later, we had Suranjit and his wife at Atanu’s house. Suranjit was, and continues to be an absolute hoot. I think he was one of the first – if not the first – businessman in our group. He is still the same person – looks at you from the top of his glasses, has a booming voice and full of energy and joie de vivre! And since his business is in selling alcohol and liquour, I obviously had a lot of questions around the more common alcohol types and brands here. Unfortunately, not too many people here go for cocktails, as he educated me. Most go for beer or scotch whiskey.

Anyways, the three of us had enough of catching up to do that I canceled the schedule for the rest of the day and we went out for lunch in a nearby restuarant. 

I am really really glad that I had made that birthday call earlier this month…

Last time I was in India, I had a chance meeting with an old classmate from nearly thirty years back. I said chance meeting because a completely fortuitous phone call revealed that we were literally a mile or so apart at that point of time. We rearranged our schedules to have lunch together that day. You might remember Sibapriya from an old blog article. Among various other topics that day, we discussed my parents’ health condition and realized that his dad and mom were not keeping well either. And he was going thru the same phase in life that I went thru a couple of years back where I had to push my parents very hard to move out of the house they lived in and get closer to a place where they could get a lot of support. In my case, we moved them close to my sister and in his case, he was trying to move his parents to his house. And he was meeting with as much agreement and cooperation as did I with my parents 🙂

In any case, I had contemplated at that point to visit his parents next time I got a chance. I got half a chance this time and capitalized on it. As I mentioned before, I had gone to my brother-in-law’s house in Kharagpur, after a rather long car ride, to check on my father-in-law’s progress for one last time. After I said good bye, called up Sibapriya in Midnapore – which was about another forty five minutes’ ride away – and arranged to come and see his ailing parents and himself.

Meeting his parents’ in his house was a very powerful moment. For one, sitting with his mom and talking to her reminded me of those early days of childhood where I used to visit my friends’ houses and their parents would welcome us, sit with us and chat with us for long times. Admittedly, a lot of that was about studies – which probably my friends and I wanted to avoid at all cost 🙂  His dad, unfortunately, was not in a physical or mental position to hold down a conversation with me.

These days, I have started making a point to visit elderly parents of my friends, relatives etc – just to make sure I get to see them at least one more time before I am robbed of that possibility.  I am not sure whether it is a generational gap or it is just me. I will assume it is just me, at this point of time. But there is a natural, spontaneous hospitality I find in pretty much all my friends’ parents that I don’t find in myself. I cannot remember when is it that I saw Sibapriya’s mom last, I certainly had not seen Amitesh’s mother ever before (see a previous blog article from a few days back) and I saw my uncle after 27 years (see another blog article from a few days back). There is a level of heart felt caring and openness in these conversations that always makes me feel like I have known them all my life and am meeting them after a month or so. I know I am not capable of that .

Finally, I took a lot of pictures of uncle and aunt. I was so excited to take their pictures and keep them for posterity, that I completely forgot to take Sibapriya’s pictures!!!! I still can’t believe that I walked away without taking any of his pictures!!!

India means all about reconnecting and creating more intersection points. Between that and spending time with my ailing dad and mom, the couple of days that I stay everytime go off very fast. Once in a while, I also get to meet completely new strangers and make new friends and hopefully start new arcs of relationships that might intersect much later in life.

Such an opportunity presented itself one evening when I stayed at the ITC Sonar hotel. My brother and I were done with all our meetings and food and had some time to ourselves. We went down to the bar for a couple of drinks before going off to sleep.

Being deeply involved with mixology means you cannot help checking out the inventory at a bar – the different kinds of gins, rums, vodka, liquers, the flavors and so on. It also meant that I could not help showing off some of my knowledge to my brother – which is razor thin to begin with, but I took full advantage of the fact my brother has no idea any of those stuff other than wine and beer 🙂

Made a few new friends there – Mathew and Anjel – both of whom are from the part of the country that my sister actually used to live in. In fact, my sister adopted their daughter from Mother Teresa’s orphanage from Mathew’s hometown!!

Speaking of mixology and making new friends, my new find this trip was Ranjan Roy – the mixologist at the bar. I tested him by asking for two special cocktails – that were not on the menu and I was quite sure not too many customers in this part of the world ever ask for those (which he confirmed later). To my delight, he nailed both the cocktails with perfect ingredients, proportions and timing. I was truly impressed that he knew the different forms of ice to be used in the two drinks. Unfortunately, my dear old brother, with no respect for decorum towards cocktails simply took out the crushed ice from one of the drinks using his spoon – “Boddo thanda hoye jachche”!!! Apparently, he liked the taste, but it was getting too cold for him 🙂

Eventually, I let Ranjan experiment on me. I asked him to suprise me with a good dessert drink. He came up with something himself – he probably should christen it with his own name. But it was actually a mix of a dessert dish and a drink  (crepes in irish creme carefully caramelized with the heat from Cointreu orange liquer set afire). You can see him in this picture with his pyrotechnics!!!

One more of my intersection points from the long past!! It was way back in 1973. I had just joined a new school in my first grade. And that was where I met Aditi Mustafi (now Guha). She was an incredibly bright student and actually was a year junior to us – but she was “double promoted” to our class. Although we started in the same “home room”, our school did a reshuffling of students in our second month and I was packed off to another home room – or “section” as we called those days, at least in India.

And then after the first grade, she left to join another school. And I never saw her for another ten years or so. In 1984, I ran into her during Saraswati Pujo in Bidhan School – where I had gone with a couple of my friends who studied there. (I did not study in that school). And then I lost complete touch with her.

Finally, last year, another friend from first grade – Subir Hore (about whom there is a previous blog entry) got me in touch with her. And this year, when I called her to wish her a happy birthday, we realized that we might have a chance to see each other during my travels in a week’s time.

And we almost did not make it. A very successful executive in one of the premium newspapers here in India, she was called away for an engagement that would have clashed with the timeframe that we had fixed to meet at. Fortunately, she was able to swing by in between her commitments. We had a great hour and a half catching up on old friends and teachers.

I am really impressed at how she has managed life at multiple fronts and balanced them and succeeded. She is taking care of her mother and mother-in-law at home (that was another common thread of our existence – it appears they are going thru the same phase as my dad and mom), having a great career at work and also raising her son – with whom, I apparently share a lot of traits – not the least of which was our penchant for fountain pens!! One great thread of discussion – the importance of parents NOT goading their kids into “standard” streams of education and instead letting them find out who they are…

I am really glad that she could make the time for me and I certainly am very thankful to Subir for putting us in touch with each other…