I had an opportunity to be in Chennai for two days. It was an impromptu visit from my native place. Just the day before my trip I WhatsApped a couple of my engineering mates to see if we can meet up in Chennai. The response was mindblowing like our Bangalore engineering mates.
That Friday night, my friend walked in and hugged me in the middle of the hotel reception hall. We were meeting after a gap of 4 years. It was a bear hug. In the next 3 hours, we covered a lot of topics. We first delved into the journey of our past. We jogged our memories to prove who was smarter. In fact, we debated whether I was present to meet his parents when they came down to Mumbai. The only saving grace for me was the pointers I dropped to get the location details correct and the members who were there from his family. We literally played Name, Place, and thing.
Then it was time to go through our inner circle of friends and how they started their journey. There again we had our internal tussle over who had come first to Bangalore and thanks once again to my memory cells I just got that right as well. Then the subject of our discussions veered around “How to bring up our teenage sons and daughters?” No debate, No tussle, and no solutions. The night was getting darker and we were getting brighter thanks to our spirits. The ideas to bring them up simply seemed to be an academic conversation. That was a passing shot to delve a little bit deeper into some of our engineering subjects which today has faded into oblivion. The discussion took a sharp turn when he recollected marks of our final semester Automobile paper and that was the end of the discussion. I told him there are better things to discuss than marks, particularly automobiles. Talking about Goa brings in scenic beauty and in my case, it is a special significance and we remembered a lot of incidents.
The best part of the discussion was when we remembered how we went to Jahangir Art gallery during our final year trip and we both had the opportunity to see all the paintings. The only thing I remembered was the wine and the snacks! This time he enthused me by demonstrating his random access of memory by narrating that whole evening, byte by byte. He mentioned that those paintings were of the roadside scenes of old Bombay. We also discussed those artists and art aficionados who sipped those drinks gently with poise as they discussed in a lower tone the significance of paintings with the subtle brush strokes. I commended him on those memories. We finally ended up discussing our future plans and also discussed how our parents are getting aged and how we have to plan for our future. Future discussions also covered our friends, families, and professions. When I reflected we can condense our discussions into three boxes which were the past, present, and future.
The day I was leaving Chennai, I had the opportunity to meet up with another friend and she was kind enough to agree for a short meet up midway. It was a very engaging conversation as we delved again on the three boxes. She explained in detail how her son went about doing his graduation and the nuances made me take note of how I need to prepare myself for the next level of parenthood or teenagerhood. I was thrilled to notice how she has reinvented herself after engineering graduation and finally settling down on a passion that is giving her the chills. She was an example of following her bliss. As I was reading these lines from the monk who sold his Ferrari, ” I learned that there is a huge difference between making a lot of money and making a lot of life“, I remembered her words again. She got into a well known IT firm from our college days but decided to follow her heart. Our conversations happened in a coffee shop. I captured these images like the below ones in the cafe and blogs so that I can revel in their power later.
We relived our past in its glory by being in our elements. We checked into the present with a sense of sincerity and responsibility towards our profession, family, and parents. On the future front, we delved with caution keeping it well to focus on the health. Friends add humor, fascination, and beauty to life. There are few things more rejuvenating than sharing a belly bursting laugh with old friends. So It was great to get these two friends to meet up at the drop of a message and that made me coin my visit as Chennai super”YES” express visit. It was an express visit and my respect goes to those two friends who decided to meet up at the drop of a hat just like that.
Revere the special moments
Leave a Reply