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 !