Friends

Just as usual in morning I got up from half sleep. My maid was banging door. She is the one who wakes me up every morning. The day she doesn’t come I sleep up to mid-afternoon. In olden days people used to keep a rooster to wake them up. I have kept a maid. I gave a quick glance at my watch, 11 O’Clock. Good she is in time.I grabbed my Tee Shirt and went to open the door. My maid was as usual banging it continuously as if Gabbar Singh is back of her. I opened the door and let her in.
At the same time phone rang. I picked up the phone.


It was from Umesh Bansal(in pic). My hostel mate. He is an Instrumentation engineer and currently working as a Manager in Kotak Securities. After few minutes of talk he asked if I can give a guest lecture on Equities and Derivatives and train newly recruited executives in his company in selling. I asked who the executives are. He informed me that they are fresh MBA graduates. That was something new. I am just a Mechanical Engineer and was being invited to give lecture to MBA grads that too on Finance which is not my core field. I told him that I am ready to give lecture. I had worked in sharekhan.com for a long time and had a good experience in share market therefore it wasn’t a big deal for me.
Myself and Umesh are similar in many ways. We both were mavericks who preferred to do things in their own way. In our engineering days we were the one who gave least time to studies. Its not that we were wasting time whole day, we were interested in something else. During exams when all the students in hostel spent most of the time slogging in books and Journals; myself and Umesh used to go on the terrace of hostel and continuously talk and discuss hours and hours about Economy, Politics and Share Market. It was our routine, after dinner at 8’O’ Clock we used to get perched on terrace and talk endlessly upto 11Pm. He was too much addicted to Business and share markets. His room was full of business news papers and Financial journals. Dhirubhai Ambani was his role model. In his room there was his big poster. In the hostel we joked that,”Dhirubhai ke do nahin teen bete hain. Anil, Mukesh aur Umesh.” In our whole engineering we rarely took studies seriously. Study was the thing which was reserved for preparatory leave. Both of us used to be late in submitting assignments,journals and project work. In our whole engineering life we never did even a single thing on time. Umesh was famous for one more feat. He had cleared 99% of his papers with 40 marks[that’s our passing mark]. Therefore many students used to take guidance of Umesh Sir and most of the time he was spotted around hostel giving lecture on”Clearing paper with fourty marks”.
We were mocked as the hopeless lazy people of the hostel. After engineering we both had same notion…that engineering is not our field.
I went ahead and joined Online share trading firm ShareKhan.com and Umesh came back to his home town in Faridabad and also joined a small share broking firm. Most of our friends with good marks joined Engineering companies and we were treated as a crazy people who had studied engineering for four years and now working in finance.
Aneways, we both were successful in our fields. I left sharekhan.com and joined an Australian Software firm that develops advanced software in Business Analysis and Umesh is now Manager in Kotak Securities and has MBA grads working under him. Ok enough of flashback memories….
Last Monday I went to his office in Faridabad for the lecture. It went smoothly. Through him I came to know that my another room mate and Junior Sugandh Goel is also in Delhi these days. He was there in Delhi for more than 8 months. Being in one city we were unaware of each other. Big news came later. Umesh told that he comes to work in Badarpur daily and his office is besides Mohan Industrial Estate, where I go to work. These 8 months we were working in same area and never knew of each other. I took his number from Umesh and called him at night.

When he picked up the phone I recognized his voice. As I said Hi, first thing that came out of his mouth was string of good words which I cant write. That was typical of Mr Goel. Umesh had told him that I will be calling him. He recognized my voice and was too happy to hear from me. This guy was my junior and a Telecommunications Engineer. For two years he was my room partner. These two years I actively did passive smoking. He was a chain smoker.

Enough for now. Next post will dedicated to Goel Saheb and our meeting.