My friend Bhaskaran

You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your friends.” ~ Mark Twain
In April this year when I heard my friend M Bhaskaran is no more then the above quote of Mark Twain came to my mind.
My close association with Bhaskaran was for just 2 years during my training period in Indian Oil Corporation's Gauhati Refinery from 1965 to 1967.
He was one year senior trainee in Chemical stream. Reading book and playing football was our common ground of friendship. He was a voracious reader of English novels. In my mindscape this typical image of him was of his lying down on his bed in his room in the Malaylee mess with a thick novel in his hands held over his chest. I am also a voracious reader from my childhood and when I started reading English novels then it was limited to reading fast paced thrillers of James Bond type. Yes,I was also fond of reading cowboy books of Louis Armour type but not exceeding 200 pages.I was fond of reading Sherlock Holmes, Hercules Poirot, Jeeves etc.
But then Bhaskaran introduced  me to reading Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace,Leon Uris etc and those writer's books were more than 400 pages and thus I transcended in reading thicker books or rather I got hooked to those type of  books  which covers myriad subjects and thus my horizon increased which helped me enhancing my knowledge about the world. The result of that reading thicker book emboldened me to read any book of any subject,thus I broke out from reading only detective or thriller books. In other words I started my journey of reading books on serious subjects. The credit goes to Bhaskaran for giving a new direction to my reading habit.
Our second area of common interest was football. Both of us was representing Gauhati Refinery in football. He was from IIT,Madras and had played for IIT and also he was pole vault champion of IIT. We have traveled with the football team in bus owned by IOC to Digboi Refinery, ONGC Sibsagar ,Oil India Limited,Duliajan to take part in football tournament among oil companies located in Assam. Those road trips increased our bonding and a special kind a camaraderie developed between us.
After a grueling match in the evening we would spend the evening sharing a nip of Old Tavern whiskey between us. Thus our friendship was sealed.
My last meeting was way back in middle seventies when he was posted at Haldia Refinery and I had gone there to help in commissioning a Desalter plant.
. By the end of 1978 i left Indian Oil for BHEL and Bhaskaran left Indian Oil for Kuwait National Oil. After that I had no touch with him but whenever I pickup a book then his smiling face comes to my mind or when I recall my football playing days of Gauhati then those evenings spent over a nip of OT in Sibsagar followed by a dinner of mutton currey and Joha rice, by the way that dinner of Sibsagar is permanently etched in my mind.
RIP,Bhaskaran !

Sweet and sour

We were having dinner in the village near Munger,Gautam Sigh a bhoomihar had taken us to his ancestral house. We had a grueling outing of badminton match in the morning against railways in their court,we had gone there representing IOC,Barauni Refinery. It was in December,1971 and that day was chura dahi festival.
We were sitting around a table full of sweets of all varieties, chura,dahi and pickle. I tentatively ate a few sweets and found my tongue was not able take any more sweet. Gautam looked at me and said " Roydada you cannot stop,so much is left."
"No,yar,can't take any more of sweet my tongue is saturated. "
He laughed and said , "That's why the pickle,you take that and it will help to rejuvenate your taste bud and then take more sweet."
Yes,friends in life too if we don't have challenges or problems and when those get resolved then the satisfaction what we get cannot be substituted by anything. It has been about 20 years since my retirement but still I love solving problems be it in office ,society or personal issues.
For example the other day my wife was struggling with Amazon Firestick in our bedroom TV,mind it I am no TV mechanic but could resolve the issue by following some fuzzy logic. After resolving I felt as though I have reached the peak of Mount Everest ,yes that's the kind of kick I got.
Now I am deeply involved in resolving an issue related with water pump which supplies water to 3 overhead tanks placed on the top of three 11storied towers consisting of more than 220 flats in our housing complex which came into existence in 1984,the original pump supplier BE pump has shut shop some 8 years back and out of 3 pumps we are now relying on1 pump as spares are not available for the other 2. I used my resources and located some people dealing with BE pump . It was like detective work burrowing the details matching with our system. This process of working out a solution is kicking up my adrenaline as we are coming closer to the solution and which is an engineering solution. 
Like the rest of the occupants I had the choice of not getting involved but as I mentioned the problem resolving is like pickle to me so that the sweetness of success I can relish. All the equipment are about 40 years old and there are recurring problem, problems related with lifts,HV,LV switchgear,transformers, DG set etc gets referred to me.
Very recently i got drive gear assembly of lift replaced.Routinely we are replacing the rope of the lifts. Three months back i got supervised the repair of the generator of DG set. My postulation about life is that most of the problems are man made and is possible to resolve, in the process your wits get sharpened no matter which age you are in numerically. In other words you will forget about your age as society still needs you.
I wrote this piece for my retired friends,resolve your problem by yourself, I know children are there to take care but slowly you will become redundant due to over dependence.
 I always end my such blog with my tag line "take it or leave it!" Choice is yours.

Remember!
"Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them.” Charles De Montesquieu