These are not the cop vs. criminal types, real or staged. But those between you and the blasts from your past. In my case, these are either classmates, colleagues, family members or students from "the good old days". All fun encounters, without any guns in sight!
Some that I recall include a breakfast with Padmapriya (ex-student) and (then) newly minted hubby at Delhi. I rarely have met people for breakfast, because usually, one of us is not fully awake at that time. But this one, all three of us were, and it was great meeting her after long and him for the first time.
Manjari is another ex-student that I met when at Nirma Institute for a conference. She had a cute daughter too, and it was nice catching up and chatting about various things including doing a Ph.D. -which she is doing. Three or four guys (like Vishal from IMT, Umesh from PES) have visited me at Indore. I ran into Animesh Jain unexpectedly on a trip to Bhopal. Shraddha and Divya Singh at Mumbai, and also Garima Shah were recent meets, planned. Divya also came in for a guest lecture at the Mumbai campus of ours.
It was nice to meet Savitha and Achint at Bangalore last year-both are from batch 1 of Kirloskar (1998-2000). Before she complains, I'll also mention two meetings with Anupriya in Bangalore. And a dinner, home-cooked, with Pallavi and her (then) newly minted hubby! My wife also was there for this one. A trip to Vrinda's house in Delhi also happened and I am glad it did. Nikita and her friend Ritika we met over dinner at Hyderabad. Jogeswari (ex-Kirloskar) I met several times at her Golftripz office and even wrote a case about the company.
Shafique and Basharat are from different institutes, but happened to know each other and we all met at a CCD on Brigade Road last year. Jimmy Jain recognised me at an airport, and we met again at another airport. He was at IIM Kozhikode as a student.
Many moons ago, I met Pushpak and Aditi from Kirloskar at Kolkata. More recently, Sapna Patni and Bhuvneet Raheja (our alums) at Indore. And Dheeraj (at Chennai) and Swapna and Vidya at Singapore.
Walking around at Bangalore a few years ago, Sowmyashree called out to us. In a beer bar, a guy walked over to Jayasimha and me. Both were from PES, where we'd taught. And very recently, when I was at Pagdandi, Pune with Pragya, an IMT student, Arvind Joshi came around, and told me he was at PES in my days.
Of course, I have planned meetings with ex-colleagues Dhanapal, Anant Ram, Vijayakumar, Gadgil and Halve all the time. And IIMB classmates in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai, or Delhi.
