There are just four friends left who have been my lifelong friends dating from my pre business school days and one of them in fact went to business school with me. Two of them are in the USA and two are in India and Sultan is one of them. Our friendship goes back to our bachelor days of the early 60s. It flourishes still and luckily for both of us our spouses too became great friends to each other.
Sultan incidentally is the gentleman (SA) in my blog post of the same title,
Sultan and Farida got married on Januray 21, 1968. They had a quiet celebration of their fiftieth anniversary earlier this month in Mumbai for which I could not go for obvious reasons.
I rang them up early in the morning to wish them and all three of us took off reminiscing about the engagement party, the wedding party and the reception.
I asked for some old photographs as I had not taken any at that time as I was about to leave Mumbai for further training to the South and was living an almost nomadic life out of a suitcase. Sultan and Farida too soon left for France for an extended stay there. It was in the early seventies that we got back together in Bombay.
I received three photographs from Farida which are reproduced below. Readers will remember those days of Black and White photographs!
The top photo shows from left to right, me, Farida, Sultan and Farida’s brother Jaffar.
The lower photo shows, from left to right, sitting on the floor, me and Sultan’s and my late friend Vishnu. Sitting on chairs in the middle Farida and Sultan flanked by two ladies from the family.
In the top photograph, Farida is not being shy but laughing at some joke that I must have cracked. You can see the bemused expression on Sultan’s face and the grin on Jaffar’s.
This is a more recent photograph of Farida and Sultan. Look how gracefully they have aged. I have no doubts whatsoever that it is because of Farida who has kept Sultan on the straight and narrow for all these fifty years. I wish that I had aged as gracefully as my friend.
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