Month: February 2022

Support.


Besides these two, I also have Email, Uncle Google,  two Resident Geeks and Kindle to get through my days.

Oddly enough, because I am better versed in handling these modern supports, I am the support and go-to person, for some friends who are not as blessed as I am, with Resident Geeks.

There are some who use me to fact check ‘forwards’ received by them. This is usually a terse “True?” either followed or preceded by the forward message, usually controversial or out of the ordinary. I inevitably oblige and find out the veracity about the message as if untrue, further forwarding can land people in trouble.

There are others who use me as their online buying agent, usually for books after some online research as well but, on the odd occasion, for other things from say Amazon or other online merchants. I haven’t yet fixed an Agency Commission but, am seriously considering doing so.

And finally, there are a couple of friends who use me as the conduit for making donations as they do not want their identities to be known to the recipients lest they be harassed for further donations. I happily oblige and am now considered to be a serious donor for some very deserving causes.

So, my supports have enabled me to become a support for others.

What about you dear reader? Are you satisfied with just being supported or, are you a support too?

It Was One Of Those Weeks.

First, it was an unusual phone call from a relative who rarely calls. This was to advice me,  of the death of a friend of many decades. He had died peacefully more than a month ago and immediately after the funeral, his wife had been taken away to the USA by their two sons who are American citizens.

This came as a total shock to me as I had been sending. WhatsApp messages to him during this period and was not surprised by his not responding as he rarely responded to messages unless specifically asked for one by me.

I am still to get over the sense of loss and the lack of proper information from his family about his death.

If that pushed me into melancholy, what followed two days later came as a very pleasant surprise and quickly changed my mood.

A friend called me up to say that she had met an old friend from my working days and mentioned a name that I simply could not remember. I requested her to send me the telephone number so that I could speak to him to place him in the proper framework.

When the phone number came it showed a DP that was vaguely familiar but, the current looks of the man could hardly be the same as it was more than three decades ago. I rang him up and straight away apologised for not being able to place him, blaming my advancing years and fading memory for the lapse. He was understanding and explained how and where we had met and what all happened due to that meeting and a few others.

That discussion took me back to a time when I was in the midst of some exciting corporate activities and took me on a nostalgia trip. Just the medicine needed perhaps to get over the melancholia that the earlier news had given me.

Then to top it all, my daughter in law’s weekly day off meant having lunch together with her and my son, an increasingly rare occurrence as, even on such off days, something or the other comes up and I either end up eating lunch alone or with my son as companion. The icing on the cake was some fantastic food followed by baclava and my favourite flavour of ice cream.

Three different kinds of days in one week with different outcomes to my mood. Rather unusual for me. Somewhat like a see-saw!

I Have Been Knighted!

If you go to my “About Me” page you will know that I am addressed by various names and I have wondered why I have never been called by the name Sir Ramana!

That has now been set at rest.

I reproduce below a screen shot of a comment I made in a blog and the response that I received from the blogger.

Do you agree that I should henceforth insist on being addressed as Sir Ramana?

Nostalgia 4.

During lunch yesterday, my son suddenly reminisced about a dish that his late mother used to make which we had not had for many years. I remembered the dish and went to find the recipe book in which I could find it and found this.
The book and the recipe found, the dish was made for lunch today and we enjoyed devouring that.

This post is however about two stories linked to that book.

Way back in 1982, a young bachelor colleague SMF had invited us to his pad for dinner and had cooked some amazing food for us. He grew rapidly in the company and by the time we had moved to our Head office by 1987, he too had moved, this time as a married man.

In the intervening years, I had developed an interest in cooking and SMF came to know of this by the treat I gave him to return his compliment by inviting him and his bride for dinner and cooking for them.

Later on, SMF came home on my birthday and gifted me with that book and it has been with me all these years.

Fast forward to a few years ago and the son of the author of the book, now a resident of Pune, and my son developed a business relationship and by chance, I met him when he had come home to meet my son. I exchanged my admiration for his father’s culinary skills and he was quite happy to hear me out. He however claimed not to have inherited that skill. Sad.

A sudden nostalgia for a particular dish led me to three incidents and some revival of interest in cooking again.