Somethings in life do not change.....

Flashback 2000. I worked with Tata Infomedia Ltd as a Business Development Executive at the Amba Deep branch in Connaught Place, New Delhi. As my work timings were from 9 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening, I usually left office on time to catch a chartered bus back to my place at Ambica Vihar. As a rule, I never did overtime. Infact I was notorious for leaving office at 5:30 pm sharp much to the anguish of my fellow workers who passed their time chatting in their extended work hours as they had no families to go back  to and lived mostly on paying guest accommodation. Of course, at times they had work too.

In one of those rare occasions I happened to stay back in office till 7 PM for some work. As I left office, I found that it was raining profusely outside and there was no way of reaching the bus stop without getting drenched in rain. As I reached my stop, I found that most of the buses that plied on my route had already left while the others were bursting at the seams because of a heavy rush of people trying to escape the fury of the rain gods. Struggling to find a way, I stood there clueless as it had already started to get dark.

Just then I saw a rickety Bajaj Chetak stop near me with the rider wearing a helmet and a raincoat. It was Manu, my colleague who occupied a seat next to me at office and was a Sr. Sales Executive for Better Photography. He had recently shifted from Yellow Pages office in Patel Nagar and my first impression of him was that of a gorging uncle like personality always interested in other’s lunch boxes. I am calling him an uncle like personality as he never wore jeans and T-shirts those days. He would always be dressed in formal trousers, shirts and a tie with black shoes and his trademark moustache.

Manu at that time lived at Rohini and he offered me a lift back home. I had no choice so I accepted the offer readily. There were the two of us riding on a feeble ancient two wheeled junker (Sorry Manu) in a rainy weather hoping every moment that the scooter will not give way before I reached my destination. The traffic in Delhi gets worse at such times and since the metro was under construction those days, there used to be utter chaos at Patel Nagar and we were stuck there for presumably more than the expected time.  Suddenly my padosi started developing his signature hunger pangs and felt the need to eat something chatpata. Till today Manu is the most chatora of all my male friends ever. So he convinced me for a quick bite and started gushing into the bylanes of Patel Nagar to land at a Tikkiwalla Chat counter. There we were standing under a make shift shelter dripping heavily  from all corners relishing those lip smacking hot tikkis as it kept on  raining cats and dogs over us.

Satiated Manu was ready with his Chetak but to my horror it refused to start. He said it was usual and will take a few minutes. With some of his time tested tricks he managed to get it rolling and we again started our sojourn. We talked about many things on the way and got to know a lot about each other. As I reached  home, as a goodwill gesture I invited him for a cup of coffee. And to my horror he accepted the invitation. I have always been a reluctant personality who never mixed up easily and maintained a distance from people. So we had a hot cup of coffee at my home and I conveyed my thank you notes to Manu.

This was the starting point of our friendship. We were destined to be friends. Very soon we developed a bond and became each other’s most trusted aides. During our friendship we have shared many such moments. Working in Photo Asia and AV Expo had its own share of thrills and so were our usual fights over office issues. I can proudly say that I have seen Manu grow from a log cabin to the White House. Always a hardworking man and a die-hard optimist, he has strived to reach the position which he truly deserves. Somehow life had been unfair to him during the initial phase of his life. He never got his due in Infomedia and became an Area Sales Manager at least six years later than he should have. But being a workaholic he has changed his luck to grab every opportunity and reach on top of the corporate ladder.

Circa 2012. We planned to meet nine years after we had left Infomedia. Though I had visited his place and he had come to Jaipur in between,  those were more of formal family meetings. Now the time had finally come where we could recreate the old times. I don’t know why but for a minute I  actually emancipated a Bajaj Chetak to stop and me sitting as a pillion rider visiting an eatery where we usually fought over as to who was going to pay the bills.  But life has come a full circle in these 10 years. As Manu called me to ask about my whereabouts a swanky new Toyota Fortuner stood in front of me with him rolling down the window panes for me. Indeed, he has changed a lot. I could smell the air of exuberance around him as we rolled back those golden times.

Manu has become a busy man today. He received calls on his swanky mobile every minute and he managed to coax the callers that he would call back once he parked his car. But as expected, the essence of this man has still not changed. He still chose a modest place to sit where we could have our fill and chat informally about old times. We talked incessantly over the things in the past and life at present. We shared our food and life. This time for a change we did not fight over the bill and my once miserly friend gifted me a chic HTC phone.

For a busy man like him, sparing his peak time was a big thing. I don’t know how much business he might have lost in these two hours he spent with me as I was my usual barbarous types with him. Without having any mercy on this persevering and dynamic Country Marketing Head, I made him hover around the busy Janpath market for roadside shopping. Poor Manu followed me without any complaint carrying his laptop bag on his one shoulder and answering in conference calls right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of market. This is the magic of old friends. Even when you meet after ages, you remain the same good old selves.

Really, somethings in life do not change, for everything else, there is MasterCard.