Over time I became closer to one of them. We played cricket. Listened to songs. When he got a reward for the third position in his third year electrical engineering, he took me along. We used to talk a lot of stuff that was very interesting to me. History. Politics. Films. Sports. These were among the topics.

He graduated and went back to his hometown in Himachal in 1978. Phones were really rare then. For that year the number of families in Patiala owning a phone line may not not have been in three digits.

In the years and decades that followed, I often wondered where he is and what and how is he doing.

My search for him finally bore fruit yesterday night. Thanks to Google uncle!

I spoke to him over the phone. After 38 years. A brief conversation.
“Looks like you are living some of your childhood dreams!” he said before we agreed to stay in touch over email also.

It would have been such a cheer to share this with my mother!

“Every plant and every petal my condition knows
Only the flower knows not, the entire garden knows”