Then and now!

It was during the summer of 1998, Calcutta.

Two guys - about 20 years of age - perched on a railing bordering Minto Park, watching the busy traffic rush by, at the intersection of Loudon Street, Landsdowne Road and Lower Circular Road.

This was back when Calcutta summers were muggy, but bearable. It was sunny, the temperature was probably in the 90s.

They sat there in silence - if silence is possible at a busy intersection. Traffic rushing in from each direction, moving in rhythm to the play of the air horns that provided the tenor (taxis) and the base (big buses belching out black smoke and lumbering on), while the electric horns on the newer cars complemented with the alto and the soprano (the really fancy foreign cars). The traffic police stood in the middle of this din and conducted the smooth harmonic flow. But the two of them sat there in silence.

One of them, lets call him A, was back home from college after an amazingly unremarkable and completely forgettable semester, while the other, lets call him J, was bunking afternoon lab. at the local college that he was attending. They had gone to high school together and were good friends. Not long ago, after graduating from high school, their paths had diverged, but the friendship hadn't waned. Their circumstances had significantly changed, though. The flying colors that each had graduated with had faded to a very sad gray. The "we are winners" look was a shadow of its earlier self. The smiles had somewhat hardened - the perfect picture of disillusioned youth.

The question at hand was - now what?? Where were they headed? College seemed to be a bit of a drag for both and the road ahead seemed uncertain and chaotic. Hence the silent contemplation.

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11 years later - probably on the very same summer day, in another part of the world - a place where fall foliage is vibrant, winters are long and the light lingers late on summer evenings.

Scanning the morning news on the NYT webpage, A comes across the picture of a model in a pop-up advertisement. Reminds him of J. How odd - they hadn't spoken in over ten years. Indeed, their lives did diverge. The distance yawned, till each became a memory to the other. Till of course the errant ad. popped up.

A facebook search and a friend request followed.

Later in the afternoon - A was running through J's profile and his network. Photographs of old school buddies, wives, children - Both A and J seemed to have figured a way to navigate the last 11 years. The colors seemed to have returned - or at least they did not need them anymore. Instead they seemed to sport genuine smiles that said "Oh! Well - !?"

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The memory of that afternoon in Calcutta, 11 years ago remains vivid yet!

The illusion of stasis

Its that time of the year again. The semester has come to an end - even the grading pile is winding down. Everything seems to be in a state of transition, as students graduate, or go off for the summer. Packing boxes and U-haul trucks dot the residence hall parking lots, and the late night bus leaving town is now in demand.

One of the joys of being a teacher is watching students grow and evolve. Sometimes the growth happens in an 'ah-ha' moment - sometimes it happens gradually, often slowly, but always surely, over months and years. Often we merely watch the growth - sometimes we have the joy of being part of it. Hence, this time of the year has a bitter-sweet feel to it - bidding farewell to students, while sharing their joys of graduation - often sharing it with their parents who are here for commencement.

On a personal note, this year I said goodbye to my first PhD student - who has started a post-doc elsewhere. Two of my MS students also graduated and even though each of them had very different trajectories - they are both in excellent jobs and one of them has also gotten married. The term 'commencement' is appropriately used for the graduation ceremony - it is indeed the beginning of a new chapter for all of them.

For those of us who call this town our home, this time of the year marks a transition from classes to research and the joys of summer. Part of us is looking forward to the exodus - waiting to reclaim the brewery deck, plotting out our long summer evenings, rooting for the final blot of snow to melt away, and the buds on the trees to finally bloom - finally making winter a distant dream. Summer beckons - but so does yard work :)

As we watch students reach milestones in their lives and negotiate marked transitions, we often miss the subtle changes and transitions we are negotiating in our own lives. My partnership with T' has entered a phase of quiet comfort. We fight the same fights over and over again - often breaking out into laughter half way through in anticipation of the predictable responses. 3 Macs, a wedding, a few fancy cast iron pots, and a programmable coffee brewer later, we lost a few pounds, gained a few pant sizes and some gray hair, and have had lots of good times.

By the time the students are back it'll be time for the north winds to blow again, and we'll be getting ready for yet another year. We'll go back to our classrooms and forget about these transitions - the students in my junior class will still be 19, just as they were last year and just as they will be next year. Once again we'll get swept up in the rhythm of the academic year, where nothing seems to change. Once again we'll be deluded by the illusion of stasis.

In the mean time - order me a Gin Mojito and lets look forward to summer 08 - i mean summer 09.