Ankan (Saha), a very favourite old boy, came visiting yesterday.
His classmate and one-time batchmate Raunak Chandak the budding businessman and car
aficionado who never forgets to let me drive the latest acquisition of his accompanied
him. We had a fun three hours chatting.
Ankan was a whiz kid all through. He sailed through school,
studied at IIT Kanpur on scholarship, flew off to the US, got a PhD in computer
science from the U. of Chicago, is currently living in the San Francisco Bay
Area and commuting to work at Mountain View, working on research at Linkedin.
By Indian middle-class standards, he is, of course, top of the heap. Thinking
of a startup: who knows but sometime soon he might be another zillionaire. But
that is not why I have always had a soft corner for him…
First, despite rough patches and long gaps, he has always been
fond of me (I think) and kept in touch. Second, it was he who got me into
blogging: this thing owes its existence to him. Third, the poor boy lost his
dad too early, and the coping has been hard, but he seems to have done well.
Fourth, though unlike his batchmate Nishant (Kamath), we talk much less often,
it is always good when we do. Three hours passed by in a flash: I hope you
enjoyed it as much as I did, Ankan and Raunak. We talked of – let me see –
science, math, computers, economics, big business, history, movies, marriage, culture or
the lack of it where we respectively live, books we have read recently, exercise,
travelling, batchmates of theirs whom I know and how much they have changed or
not, fun aspects of social psychology... I forget the rest. It set me wondering
what it is about female ex students that they rarely visit, and hardly have
anything interesting to talk about!
Thank you for coming, Ankan. And thanks for City of Djinns (Nishant, if you are reading this, we collectively
remembered how good the Colorado whisky was! So thank you, too). Take care. May
life shower its choicest blessings on you all. And keep a little more closely
in touch…
4 comments:
Dear Sir,
I am glad to know that you had a good time and that the whisky added to that in a small measure. Now I have two books by Dalrymple on my list (the other being White Mughals).
Sincerely
Nishant
Suvro da,
This was a very good post to read. I'll thank Ankan and very warmly too since he's the one who got you to bring this blog to life.
The conversation which you said spanned so many different things (all the more reason I wish I'd been there) reminded me why I got hooked into writing to you and waiting for your long letters (we didn't talk about computers though...). And then came this blog and in some ways it reminded me of your letters - so much about that.
Somewhere along the line, I think I've become a little (more than a little?) dimwitted and lacking in humour during conversations (but I did have a longer response regarding evolutionary biology! I should have risen to the bait): "tunnel vision - the bane of sociologists maybe, eh?" (I can almost see you saying with a growl among other successive things). This post of yours reminded me that the whisky Nishant got was very good...oh, well, on that note, I'll end this comment with wishes of cheery and warm times this year and interesting conversations and good company and more.
Shilpi
Wonderful to know you had a nice time! Happy reading. I just started reading The Last Mughal by Dalrymple. All best to you.
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