Modern Social Media is amazing. An old colleague from my time in North India between 1980 and 1983, Awadesh got in touch with me through the facebook/whatsapp media a couple of weeks ago and has been in regular touch since then. He retired a couple of years ago and has settled down in Noida near Delhi and spends his time enjoying his grandchildren.
In one of our chats on facebook he mentioned that he was going through some old photographs and was taken down memory lane when I was in the North. He very kindly sent me some photographs through email, another great convenience and I too went down memory lane remembering those very enjoyable days.
I have chosen three photographs where I feature to show my readers how I looked then!
The first one is in the summer of 1980 when I visited Kanpur with the Manager from whom I was taking over and the local Administration Manager. I am still in regular touch with both the gentlemen featured in the photograph though one is in Calcutta and the other in Delhi.
The next is a group photograph with two expat Managers, one of whom was retiring shortly. I used to wear a tie occasionally!
The next one is when I was handing over charge to my successor in Delhi while visiting Kanpur with the then Branch Manager on the right. You will notice that I am sans my trademark beard. This was due to a bet that I had lost when I had to shave of my beard. I grew it back promptly after a few days of being without one.
Our firm celebrated its 100th year of existence with great pomp all over India while we were in Delhi and the three and a half years that we lived there those days are indelibly etched in my mind for many things least among them the fantastic team that I worked with under severe competitive conditions. We worked hard but also played hard those days. Compared to those days, my other postings were much easier to handle in terms of competition and climate!
Among the other things that come to mind are the death of Sanjay Gandhi, the great train robbery of the Gomti Express when bandits left two of our colleagues alone because they saw the travellers’ briefcases among them and said “these fellows are agents, unlikely to have any money with them”!
There are some more memories of personal nature, the most important one being my hips giving way during our stay there, and others like the holidays that we took all over North India as well as entertaining many relatives and friends who came stayed with us and visited places of interest all over.