Quick update: Chini, Ghode, Bha, Nagesh and I had lunch on Friday. Varun was missing — he claims that he was grilling burgers at his company picnic.
Unlike the past few years, when our lunches were always held at Chaat Paradise, a vegetarian gujju place that has “always” been there, Ghoda insisted that we meet at the new and improved Chaat House. 


It turned out to be further for some of us to get to (and closer for others, with the classification of whose travel times getting shorter left as an exercise for the astute reader).

A few minutes before I reached there, while waiting at a traffic light, I read my email and found three messages that embodied the high bar and elite nature of the IIT education:

Message #1 from Chini: “I am here. Nobody else here”

Message #2 from Ghoda: “I am here. Nobody else here.”

Message #3 from Bha: “I am here. In the parking lot”

Somewhat confounding, that two of them were sitting in this one room restaurant, apparently unaware of each other. And Bha was still in the parking lot! (Though Bha’s message could be interpreted on multiple levels, the more obvious one being that he was trying to play the role of the Ghoda-of-Old, who was always late and always apparently “in the parking lot” when he was in fact nowhere near the place)

Anyway, due to the magic of electronic communication, by the time I reached there, Chini and Ghoda had managed to find each other across different tables and had started ordering.

I joined them, to be shortly joined by Shirley and Bha as well.

Ghoda’s claim that this place has better food was mostly proved correct. Some worrying aspects of age creeping up on all of us (even the best of us!) can however be seen these days in snippets of the conversation. Three points, in particular, I will leave you with:

Point #1: Chini after having eaten a bulk of second serving of pav bhaji remarked that this serving was not quite up to the previous one, which the server had brought around a few minutes ago. We nodded, impressed at his ability to discern subtle differences in spicing, temperature and terroir of the preparation spaced only minutes apart. (This is why their batch is better than our batch, no doubt). 

Unfortunately, the illusion was shattered a few minutes later when the server came around and plonked down a few more dishes on the table, including one that was announced as “pav bhaji”! 

Pave Bhaji? What has Chini been eating two helpings of, so far? 

Baingan bharta!

Point #2: Ghoda looks at the contraption on my wrist, a black piece of plastic and asks what it is. I explain that it is a watch, a Pebble smart watch. Ghoda wants to take a look at it, so I take it off and hand it to him. He asks what all it can do. I explain that it can read email, do caller-ID, etc.  He seems suitably impressed. Turning it over, before handing it back, he looks at the display and sees “12:53” in large letters on the face. 

“What’s that?”, he asks.

The rest of the table looks at him, dumb founded. Its a watch, after all, and (sometimes) tells the time.

Point #3: Ghoda,a little flustered that he’s forgotten that we’re having lunch and that 12:53 is the present time, returns the watch to me, and protests that his forgetting that a watch could tell the time is merely normal.
“After all, guys …”, he protests, “this is a wearable watch!”


Not quite sure what kind of watches Ghoda grew up with, but I am pretty sure that he should remember this new invention — even from his IIT days!

Much hilarity ensued — some with cause, as in the above three cases, and most without.