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Today morning, I received a rather formal e-mail from a gentleman named Krishnan. He is the CEO of a successful technology start up based out of Bangalore and is writing a book on a contemporary topic. Krishnan wished to use content from an article of mine, that I had published on that topic, in his book and hence had written to me seeking approval for the same.
Krishnan, Nachiketa and I had met for the first time in July, 1990 in the class room of Section-B, Intermediate First Year (MPC) in Little Flower Junior College, Hyderabad. We became close buddies very soon and always made it a point to have lunch together every day. We managed to keep this ritual going for the next 2 years without any exception.
When the Intermediate course ended in April, 1992, we bid farewell to each other with a promise to keep in touch. Later that year, Krishnan joined Mechanical Engineering in IIT, Madras; Nachiketa joined Electronics Engineering in Osmania University and I joined Computer Engineering in JNTU.
Nachiketa and I stayed in touch regularly all through our engineering years. We somehow lost touch with Krishnan after he went to Chennai and despite Nachiketa and me trying hard to reach him several times during our 4 years of engineering, we could not get hold of him.
I went to Chennai in March 1996, when I was in my engineering final year to attend an interview for admission into XLRI. My interview was the last one scheduled in the morning session that day. I finished my interview and was walking out of the campus when I saw the candidates for the afternoon session of interviews walking in. Like a flash, suddenly I saw Krishnan among those candidates. I called out after him but he could not hear my voice and continued to walk on and vanished into the building. As soon as I returned to Hyderabad, I told Nachiketa about this and regretted having missed the chance of getting back in touch with Krishnan.
After our engineering courses ended in June, 1996, Nachiketa went on to join IIM, Ahmedabad and I joined MDI, Gurgaon. Nachiketa and I continued to remain in touch during the MBA days as well. One summer afternoon during the vacation after completing first year MBA, Nachiketa and I met for lunch to catch up on old times. He then told me that he had heard from someone about Krishnan joining XLRI, Jamshedpur. Nachiketa and I still kept making efforts to reach him but for some reason or other it was not possible to get back in touch with Krishnan.
Nachiketa and I finished our respective MBAs in April, 1998 and joined the corporate world. We however continued to be on the look out for Krishnan now leveraging the Internet and B-School Alumni networks but all efforts were in vain. A key issue we faced was that we did not know Krishnan’s surname. In those days it was customary in Andhra Pradesh to initialise the surnames in schools and colleges and hence no one would usually know the full Surname.
Time flew by very fast and it was soon Circa 2013. By then, Nachiketa had comfortably settled down in the U.S. in a plush Finance job and I had completed 15 years in the Indian IT industry out of which the most recent 6 years was in Infosys based out of Hyderabad. I happened to visit the Bangalore office of Infosys in February, 2013 for a key client CXO visit. It was an important client and I was naturally a bit nervous about the presentations to be made. I was amongst the 4 executives who were presenting that afternoon and each one of us were representing our respective business units. The first presentation got over and it was then my turn to present. I went ahead, did my job, wound up my presentation within the allocated time of 30 minutes and returned to my seat feeling satisfied that I had done a fairly good job. Now it was the turn of the third executive to present. He put on the slides and started talking through the initial slides. He went on with his slides for 5 minutes while I was mulling over the presentation that I had just finished and was reflecting on the responses that I had given to the client queries. I quickly SMSed our Client Partner who was also in the same room and checked as to how my presentation went and he responded with a “Thumbs Up” sign.
I was now fully relieved, happy that my job was done, sat back in my seat comfortably and started to focus on the presentation being made by the third executive. After seeing his presentation for 2 minutes, my mind found itself suddenly being transported back in time to 1991. The image of a 17 year old boy giving an animated speech, fully engrossed in the content being delivered, his deep belief in what he spoke very apparent from his emotional tone, his intense passion visible through his body language, his elegant diction and confident voice with a faint trace of Tamil accent, all started flashing in my mind. I recalled that his invocation of the Tamil Poet-Saint, Thiruvalluvar, at the beginning of his speech had then struck me as remarkable though I did not understand a single word of Tamil.
The occasion was the Annual Day at Little Flower Junior College and the event described above was the final round of the Elocution competition. An extremely competitive environment permeated all over the the Little Flower Junior College of those days and boys would compete very fiercely for every single thing: big and small alike. It was a “boys only” college and I sometimes wondered how much more fiercer the competition would have been, if there were pretty girls sitting in the audience whose attentions had to be gained. To cut a long story short, the 17 year old boy, as you guessed right, was Krishnan in his “element” during our Plus Two days and he won the First Prize in the elocution competition by a wide margin. I also participated in that competition and managed to scrape through winning the Second Prize and I was quite pleased with myself as that was the best I could hope for.
Coming back to the CXO presentation that took place in the corporate meeting room in February, 2013, while I knew that the name of the executive who was then presenting was also Krishnan and we also did exchange a couple of mails in the past one year but we had never met in person till that day. Besides I could not recognise him at all based on his build or facial features or voice despite being in the same meeting room for the last 2 hours. When we had bid farewell to each other as 17-year old teenage boys, we had just started growing faint moustaches and slight facial hair and our voices had probably just broken. It was simply impossible to recognise him based on facial features or voice. However the body language, intensity, passion and modulation style together with language punctuated with exact timing and the continued presence of that faint trace of Tamil accent in an otherwise perfect English were indeed definite give aways. I was very excited and happy that I had finally found my good old friend for whom Nachiketa and I were on the look out for a very long long time. Yes, 21 years in the life of a human being, is indeed a very long long time!!!
After the client meeting was over, I went over to him to double check if he was indeed the person that I knew from my Plus Two days. Krishnan did confirm all the facts about him from the past which proved that he was indeed the one I was looking for. However, very surprisingly he did not remember even faintly about me or Nachiketa or of our memories together from the Plus Two days. Since, both of us had another client engagement starting in a few minutes, we parted quickly after exchanging our business cards. I flew back to Hyderabad taking the early morning flight next day and could not get to meet Krishnan again in Bangalore during that trip. However, as soon as I returned to Hyderabad I did make it a point to send a e-mail to Krishnan and attempted to revive his memories. I then looped Nachiketa into the mail chain who also played his part but of no avail.
Around 5 months later, I heard the news from the corporate grapevine that Krishnan had resigned from Infosys and was setting up his own technology start up. I did feel happy for him and was sure that he will do very well as an entrepreneur. My belief was corroborated in the coming days when I saw his company in the list of ‘Top Innovative Startups’ of the year as per a survey conducted by a leading Indian business magazine.
And TODAY morning, I was in for a really pleasant surprise when I saw an e-mail from him that was specifically addressed to me. Naturally, there was absolutely no trace of familiarity and it was a very formal and polite e-mail. I pondered over for the next few minutes as to how I should respond to his email.
Should I reply as I would to a friend whom I had known for 25 years or should I reply with the standard corporate template which is typically used for such purposes?
I finally chose the former option and it indeed pleased me very much...
