HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEARTS COMING ACROSS ONE ANOTHER AFTER MANY MANY YEARS

The Title High School Sweethearts coming across one another after many, many, years, has a feminine taste to it especially the term Sweethearts. To give a different flavor to this term Sweethearts needs some work to be done on it. How about the terms like Sweet buddies, Sweet mates, etc.? Do they in anyway alter the meaning. If at all it is negligible.

With this kind of premise I decide to start to begin the story. Of course the broad outline of the story was in my mind but it took almost a week to decide to proceed further with it.

Now the story begins somewhat like this. My telephone bell rang. On lifting, the call, the caller introduced himself as a junior of Ajit, in the Engineering college, almost decade ago. The information he wanted to convey to me was that his Senior Ajit would like to meet me. It took me by surprise and tossed up to me few fond memories. I thanked him and thrilled myself by relating to him more about what I knew of Ajit, the very unassuming, very hardworking, very helpful student that he was, during school days.

This gentleman was living in Dubai as he was working in some Engineering Company in Dubai. He said that he awaits my confirmation to program the visit of Ajit to Abu Dhabi where I was working. I in turn promised him that he will receive my confirmation by the next day and we disconnected the phone.

From the very next minute my thoughts got engaged in a maze of ideas. Shall I go to Dubai to meet him, will it be advisable to call him to my residence for lunch, is he alone or is he with his family, what is the standard of life that he is enjoying these days, shall I invite him and his junior, should it be on a week day or keep it for a weekend, and many more silly, some pragmatic looking ideas, crisscrossing rendering it hard to come to a firm conclusion.

It was almost nearing the end of the day and not much time remaining to send back the word to the junior of Ajit, I decided to call him back to collect more information to make my life easier.

On calling him I could gather Ajit is here with his wife who was her student at Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, where he was a Professor and Head of the Electrical Engineering Department. Ajit and his student wife were in transit to India. After reaching India Ajit had the job of judging a few students in Delhi at Indian Institute of Technology, who were going to defend their doctorate degree thesis. He probably had a week at his disposal before heading to India. Ajit was also a special guest for his junior and the junior seemed to be quite possessive and gave an impression of being highly privileged to be presented with an opportunity to play a host to his Senior Ajit, yeah Dr. Ajit, PhD in Electrical Engineering, Ex-student of IIT Kharagpur, and of course my school mate at St Pauls.

The programme of the visit of Dr. Ajit to Abudhabi ended up beginning on a working day which deprived the junior of Ajit to accompany him to Abu Dhabi. Now on my part I spoke to Ajit the previous day of his visit and told him that his just meeting me will a waste of his very precious time. I could gauge from his wish that as an expert in Electrical Engineering his every single lecture or talk could be a great opportunity to a lot young engineers. Accordingly I tried to contact a couple of Project Managers of the Subcontractors working on the project I am employed. To my pleasant surprise Mr. Suresh, the Project Director of a reputed Subcontractor graciously upheld my suggestion and wasting no time informed me the time and number of young and not so young engineers who will be present at the venue and room I had arranged in consultation with the administration Department.

Mr. Suresh also expressed his willingness to arrange a lexus to pick Dr. Ajit from the residence of the junior of Ajit from Dubai and a site visit before the lecture or what Dr. Ajit would like to call a Pep talk.

As per schedule the lexus car reached the residence of the junior of Dr. Ajit and picked him up at 8 A.M. and reached Abu Dhabi at 10 A.M. Dr. Ajit and family was received by Mr. Suresh and the Administration Director who was also extremely happy to have Dr. Ajit. All four of them came to my office and Dr. Ajit hugged me and became nostalgic to see me after leaving school in 1974, again meeting second time during his stay in hostel at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1979 and finally meeting again in 2019, which is after about 40 years.

After sitting in my office for few minutes, after a brief chat we proceeded to the venue that is the meeting room where the lecture was scheduled. The young engineers and not so young engineers were ready with their note books anxiously awaiting the start of the lecture by Dr. Ajit.

The lecture of Dr. Ajit preceded introduction by the Project Director, Mr. Suresh Kumar. His introductory speech was very humorous when he asked all the participants in the room to put their hands into their pockets and handbags and paused for a moment and requested by saying remove your mobile phones and put it on silent mode till all lectures are over. In a few minutes Dr. Ajit continued with his talk and I came out to arrange for the certificates to all participants.

After the pep talk session got over it was almost 4 PM and Dr. Ajit and his wife and myself, accompanied representative of the Subcontractor on Abu Dhabi tour and visited the Grand Mosque. By the time we finished going around the Abu Dhabi Grand Mosque it was 6.30 P.M.

We had together a little early dinner around 7 PM and Dr. Ajit and his family thanked me and the representative of the Subcontractor and left for Dubai.

Ajit invited me to visit him in Norway where now he is a faculty member in the Haugesund University.

Regards

Chidambaram K.V.