Page out of my autobiography.......

I had planned for it to be a low key affair, but my 2 daughters had other ideas. They invited all of my and Shreysi’s friends and arranged for a grand party to celebrate our 25^th anniversary. I was so overwhelmed with their efforts, they had invited everyone from our school friends to our friends in our MBA school, they even invited Surenderpal, the store manager of the store I audited during my first summer training at Harayali. It had been so long that I had met many of them. After the beemer acquisition that established our company on the global stage I became extremely busy, shuttling across the world on business trips trying to grow our international business, as a result I had lost touch with many of my friends. So had Shreysi who had been equally busy looking after our business in India. It was thus a great experience catching up with friends and reliving old memories.

We decided to go on a vacation together with many of our friends to Leh. I remember Alok (yes our respected, now retired ex Governer of RBI) suggesting that we go on bikes like we had in college, this suggestion was perhaps a bit too ambitious considering most of us now had stiff bodies with fragile bones which could no longer take the 1,010 km journey on bikes. We thus discussed alternative plans like taking a flight to Leh directly or taking a flight to Srinagar and then driving down from there to Leh etc.

We continued making many such plans throughout that evening (only a couple actually materialized, yes the Leh plan did). It was one of the most enjoyable days of my life, after such a long time I was meeting with so many of my old friends. This day helped me to realise how important friends are and how much I had missed them over the last few years.