Last time

I’ve refrained from posting because I heed George Eliot’s caution that “Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.” I have nothing to say.

Although in conversation I am never at a loss for words, it is not easy for me to write something meaningful without a prompt. I feel that if I write something unprovoked, it had better be worth reading. This is not one of those instances. This time I write just to see if I can still write. You’ve been cautioned.

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I had the worst flight of my life a couple of days ago. The flight time was nearly 18 hours, non-stop from SFO to BLR. Of the hundreds of international flights (most of them between the US and India) and hundreds of domestic flights I have taken, I would rate this one as the worst I have endured. For the record, Finnair, which I took between Dallas TX and Mumbai the previous visit to India in November 2022, was the second worst.

I had not taken Air India for years. I wanted to see what it was under the new private sector management. I regret to report that it was as bad as I had remembered Air India to be. The inflight amenities were terrible and the food pathetic. I would hesitate to put that kind of food in front of a house pet. However the cabin crew were very good.

I hope in a few years Air India will recover its past glory. But for now, I’d rate it a 2 out of 10. The Middle East and the Far East airlines are much better than Indian airlines.

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Bangalore is wonderful. I arrived at BLR around 5 AM yesterday. My friend KM picked me up. On the way home he told me that it had been the driest August they’ve had. But I must have brought good luck to the city. Around 9 PM yesterday, there was the most amazing rain, lightning and thunderstorm in the city that raged for a couple of hours. I was delighted. Nearly three months of Texas summer of 40+ degrees Celcius incessant heat was washed away in a few hours. Goodbye Texas summer.

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My visit to my old hometown — the San Francisco Bay area — was brief but special. I was there for only ten days but I got to see some of my most favorite people. As usual I stayed at the home of my friend AP and his wife TN. Their daughter, Dhriti, will turn two years old in December. She’s a sweetie.

I must mention that another of my dear friends, BP, has also named their daughter Dhriti. They live in Florida and I got to meet her for the first time a couple of weeks ago when they were in Dallas, TX.

The special event this time was that I got to see my friend SC in Union City,CA, and his wife’s 10-month old daughter for the first time. They named her Trinoyoni — which is one of the names of Ma Durga and it means “one with the third eye.” With her third eye Mother Durga surveys the entire universe that she’s mother to. Durga is special to us Bengalis. She’s mother to us all.

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I have to tell you about a very Bengali convention: the use of “daak naams”. Like everyone else, we have our formal names — the names that appear on formal documents. My formal name is “Atanu.” But every Bengali also has another name that is only used by family and close friends. My daak naam is “Nu.” That’s what my family and very close friends call me.

I find that convention endearing. The thing about daak naams is that it distinguishes those who are especially close from those who are not. If you are close to some Bengali, you get to know and use his or her daak naam.

What’s more interesting is that daak naams establishes a mapping. Let me explain with my example. My mother called me Nu but to my grandparents I was Noodi, and to my relatives on my mother’s side I was Chotelal. The “name to person” mapping is “many to one”, in set theory lingo.

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Since AP and TN’s daughter Dhriti is so close to me, and since as a Konkani she doesn’t have a daak naam, I had to give her one. Get ready to know her daak naam. Ready? It’s Daku. And when I feel extra affectionate, I call her Dakusan. Only I get to use it.

For your information, in Japanese the equivalent of the Hindi “ji” is “san.” Hence “Daku-san.”

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One of the trivially true but absolutely fascinating true facts in retrospective is this. There was a time in your life when your mother put you down one time and never picked you up again. She did not know that that was the last time that she would ever pick you up and then put you down, and never do that again.

Picking you up and putting you down was just routine, nothing remarkable. But there was that one time when she picked you up and then she put you down — and she did not know that she’d never pick you up again.

We can easily appreciate the fact that there has to be first and a last time we do anything. The first time we got on a plane or the last time we saw someone. But to me the last time we were put down by our mothers and never picked up again seems sort of weird to contemplate.

C’est la vie.

Picture at the head of this post: That’s my friend CM’s daughter, Cassie. She’s college going age and that picture cannot be traced back to her. Therefore it’s safe for me to put it in the post.