This story, as some stories go, is of two characters and many places. Of one plot and many sub-plots. Of a couple of once-lost friends, but about long-lasting friendships.

It all started about 4 decades ago, in a sometimes sleepy, sometimes dusty railway colony in the old-world town of Lucknow. When two toddlers, were pushed into a sepia-tinged convent school by their much aspiring parents: one parent, a Malayali; the other, a Bengali. The boys, ignorant of their race, caste, creed or status, struck an immediate friendship (that is how they are now fond of looking back & claiming it to be!)

Many summers and winters passed; umpteen tiffin boxes were exchanged, a whole lot pilfered; many library periods, annual school days, school picnics and sports days spent together; and numerous progress reports signed off by the parents. The friendship, (unknowingly to the characters) grew roots and cemented itself in the hearts and minds of the two.

But, as it goes in most stories, good things come to an early close, pretty soon. And thus, this friendship too came to a grinding halt, one early spring, when the Class X results came out. And one character was packed off, all shouting, kicking and screaming, in yet another grimy, diesel-powered, long-distance train to a distant, ‘native’ place, by his parents. They, wanting to return to their roots, and he, forced to put roots in an alien, hostile, most-times mocking, another language-speaking town, far away from the comforts and familiarities of old-world Lucknow.

Kerala beckoned! The burden of getting a ‘higher’ education & a better career took our character to different towns of Kerala, from Calicut to Trivandrum – another old-world, laid-back but not so dusty town. Trivandrum. Work awaited, a career was made, the character grew from dreaming of becoming a journalist, just about becoming a tour operator, and then eventually became an event manager, going places, hopping from city to city, travelling from state to state and sometimes, country to country, emplaning planes, boarding trains, clambering up buses, hailing taxis. In between, a beautiful family too happened.