Jibanda* and Tapatidi**

I usually use the first letter as an acronym for the people i write about. But today's post is an exception since i feel it would be demeaning these two guys... they are one of the first mentors both B and I had when we started our life in Mumbai.
A common acquaintance (who still is the Finance Minister of our home state) had given us a scribbled sheet on which Jibanda's telephone number was written. So on reaching Mumbai on January 14, 1991, we went visiting them on January 17, the first Sunday, in an alien city...
Both of them welcomed us as if they had known us for decades... the warmth was palpable, the affection grew later and still continues...
Jibanda was an Economist with the Tatas and Tapatidi was a Lecturer in Geography at Siddharth College...
their only son Sunny was in the fifth standard at that time...
Thus began our tryst with the Mukhopadhyays (incidentally, we also share a common surname)... every weekend was spent with them, over dinner... for me and us both, they became a source of great comfort...
Jibanda came with us when we went to visit a Professor of Political Science at Bombay University, in the hope that i would pursue a career in research... his logic was simple: an academic has intellectual freedom with more control over time (what he implied then, I did not understand... that was his way of telling us that it would be easier when we decided to go the family way, but that was far from our minds at that time)...
It was Tapatidi who spotted the vacancy for a Junior Research Officer at one Danida-funded project with the Indian Council of Medical Research and asked me if I was interested...
and when i did bag that assignment, she said, "You will be engaged in good work, but the pay is less at Rs 2300 a month"... not that I cared, it was my first job and though it was quite a travel from Borivli to Mahalakshmi, i did complete the project and moved on...
Both of them were shocked, when I changed gears and took on a journalistic assignmnet with Business India and then onto ICICI, but did not interfere since they knew the limits pretty well...
When R was on her way, Tapatidi would cook and bring it over home so that she could feed me with things i crazed for... in the menatime, they had befriended both of our families back at Kolkata and were requested by both our parents to look after me...
When R came home, both showered their affections...
We moved cities, our touch with them continued, but became less and less frequent...
but we knew the bare outlines of their lives and they knew what we were up to...
Sunny is doing very well as a Medical Researcher in the CMU, Jibanda is now an academic with a premier business school and Tapatidi has retired formally from her job, but continues post graduate teaching, in addition to her political activities (she was all through a Member of the CPIM and Jibanda was all through an avowed supporter of the Right)...

It might strike you, why am i writing all this? Just to tell you about two excellent people who have shown us, by the way they have lived life, that it is possible to have simple dreams and attain them, with a large dose of mutual difference, but larger dose of mutual respect...

They are alone now, that Sunny is in the US, and on the last call, last weekend we made, we both felt Jibanda, after having lived through 65 summers (in his own words) is still as inspiring as ever, even if he is (and always was) a little sarcastic...

*da means elder brother; di elder sister