Tag: Nostalgia

Friends.

My niece Nina published this in Facebook.

I am blessed in that I have many friends like that. Let me just share a few incidents with you.

It was in 1997 that I got grounded during a weekend due to a storm in a place called Silvassa on the West coast of India. At that time, I was marketing among sailors of all kinds and the storm had kept all maritime activity on hold and I was stuck with nothing to do. I remembered that I had a friend Youhanna, from my teen age days, living close by in a place called Umbergaon.

Accompanied by my colleague Nandu, who was touring the coast with me at that time, we drove down to Umbergaon and with some difficulty located my friend. Youhanna and I had not met each other for over a decade before that day. When we got off the car Youhanna got down from the veranda where he was sitting came and gave me a bear hug and took me by hand and led me inside to his home. My colleague just followed and when the initial welcome was over, I introduced them to each other too. Youhanna’s wife came out and greeted me and the three of us started off talking to each other as though we had not, not met each other for over a decade. We spent a few very happy hours with them, had our lunch with them and returned to Silvassa.

In the car and during subsequent meetings, my colleage, Nandu found it incredible that despite such long disconnect, we could simply start off where we had left earlier. Subsequent contacts with Youhanna have been on the telephone and sporadic, but I have no doubts whatsoever that if we were to meet again, it would be exactly the same.

Just a few weeks ago, I got a phone call from another old friend Nat who had arrived at Pune the previous evening and waited to surprise me the next day. He and his wife Usha subsequently landed up at home during the time that I was still using the walker to move around, and the meeting was exactly as the quotation above states. We simply started off where we had left off during our previous meeting which was also a few years ago.

Anil and Nina were great friends to have during my first hip replacement surgeries way back in 1985/7. They lived very near to the hospital where I was operated upon and would bring delicious home cooked meals for me. After I moved out of Mumbai in late 1987, as did Anil and Nina too, we lost touch with each other. In one forwarded email that I received four years ago, Anil’s name popped out of the list of recipients and I sent an email to him asking if it was the same Anil and finding that it was, we reestablished contact and it was as though we never lost touch with each other.

I have other friends like Vela in Chennai, Sultan in Mumbai and Kashi in Kolkata, with who, I am not in regular touch, but who are dear friends nevertheless. We call or mail each other every now and then and get updated about happenings in our lives.

Friendship is like good wine. It gets better with age.

Coincidentally, my young FB friend Sukriti posted this poster on FB today and I hope that she gets to read this blog post.

Mogra.

This morning when I was sitting on my favourite sofa and solving crossword puzzles, I got a whiff of the scent of mogra. An all time favourite of ours. When the breeze is from the North West of our home, the scent wafts in to our veranda and to parts of the sitting room. The bush was planted by my late wife when we had first moved in to this house twenty plus years ago and is now almost a tree.

This is the season for it to flower and the first flowers opened out this morning and hence the scent.

Needless to say, it took me off on a nostalgia trip.

Memory Lane.

Two years away,
I got back today,
Tried calling up this girl I used to know,
But when I said hello,
She didn’t know who the hell I was supposed to be.

[Chorus]
Memory Lane,
We’re here again,
Back to the days,
And I’ll remember you always,
So much has changed,
Now it feels like yesterday I went away.

The words around, that she’s moved town,
About a thousand miles away from here.
And I found something she wrote a long time ago,
And it reminds me of the place I know.

[Chorus]

So much has changed (so much has changed),
So much has changed (So much has changed),
So much has changed (So much has changed),

Down Memory Lane,
We’re here again,
Back to the days,
And I’ll remember you always,
So much has changed,
But it feels like yesterday I went away.

So much has changed (so much has changed),
So much has changed (So much has changed),
So much has changed (So much has changed),
Down Memory Lane… Lane… Lane

I hope that you enjoyed this post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when we post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Grannymar.

Tornado, Steam Locomotive.

This morning, one of our newspapers, the Business Standard carried a beautiful photograph of the Tornado, steaming its way over the Ribblehead Viaduct near York in the UK. The news about the run however is available here. Unfortunately, I am unable to give a link or reproduce the photograph despite some serious attempts including a phone call to the Executive Editor of the news paper. I have however been able to locate another photograph which may be over the same viaduct.
tornado3761517046_4c0e3f800c
My readers will remember my fascination with the Indian Railways, when I was goaded into writing a post by Sandeep. This morning’s photograph reminded me of the promise that I had made to him about writing more posts on railways, and here is one of them. I hope to write a few more, but of a different nature than this.

When The Economist wrote about the Tornado in February of this year, I had every intention of getting to the UK some time soon and traveling by this train. That situation changed subsequently and all my travel plans are on hold, but the article that I had saved up for future reference is still with me on my “To do List”. This is a fascinating story of nostalgic enthusiasts coming together and making such a great enterprise possible.

In the process of conducting some more research, I came across another blog which gives some more information about the trust that made this possible and that too makes fascinating reading.

It appears as though I shall soon have to make a short trip to a town about 600 Kms up north west from here and I plan doing it by train by transiting at Mumbai. I really look forward to it, and if I do, it will make for a great blog post.

Somethings, Thank God, Never Change.

My young friend Sandeep, who is a regular reader, encourager (David, is that correct English?) and commentator of my posts has sent me a link to an article in the Time Magazine.

No Mumbaikar, that is what blue blooded Bombay wallahs like to be called, worth his name, would deny that the restaurant reviewed in the article deserves Heritage status.

I was introduced to the Britannia Restaurant, by my uncle PK, my father’s younger brother, who for many of us in the family, epitomized everything good about Mumbai and uncles. This was way back in 1967. After that, I must have made that special effort to visit this wonderful restaurant many times and reading about it now, has made me very nostalgic.

The Parsi community briefly covered in the article, is another institution of Mumbai and India for that matter, about which enough can never be said. They are God’s gift to India for being such wonderful people with their cuisine, hospitality, amiability, sense of humour, culture and warmth. Many of the readers of this blog will recognize the name of Zubin Mehta, who is a Parsi, and now of course Ratan Tata another Parsi icon who has launched the world’s cheapest car ever.

It is so nice to know that the younger generations of Mumbaikars are in agreement with us oldies about the Britannia Restaurant.

Thank you Sandeep.

Stenographers And Secretaries.

I am semi active in one social network which is due to some people very close to me using that network to blog and leave comments on the posts of people in our network.

This morning, I suddenly got an alert that someone had commented on a post that I had written more than a year ago, for the network. I went to see that comment and was flooded with nostalgia.

This article was written much before I decided to launch rummuser.com because, at that particular moment, one of my old Secretaries had contacted me for some personal work and I was musing about the ‘good old days’!

I hope that you will read the old post. I would however appreciate any comments that you may want to make being made here. Thank you.

Willy-nilly, I got involved with the commentator through her new post which has been a remarkable one, talking about her experience as a wife of a surgeon. I hope to persuade her to let me blog about her post too anon.