The beady eyes bore through the lenses into my eyes.
"So tell me what you do!"
I explained how I was in engineering school hoping to enter medicine.
"Medicine! Such a fine field! You should work hard to become a good doctor."
I sheepishly glance around the room letting it sit upon my second cousin once removed beseeching her to save me from this senile gentleman.
"So how do you plan to use your electrical engineering in medicine? Research on the electrical signals of the heart or brain? Or going more into imaging? There's plenty of money in imaging and radiotherapies! I know a couple companies that produce medical equipment and they're at the top of the markets these days!"
My head whips around quickly. Here was a man I'd never underestimate again. This man, a repository of knowledge stretching back 80-some years, kept going inquiring about specifics some which I'd know and others I would have to admit of having no knowledge. And it was all interesting! The intensity he used to speak to you made you aware that You mattered and your thoughts on his topics were of the utmost importance to him.
After seeing him back in 2000 and experiencing him for the first time, I began seeing him once each time I went back to India. 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005 -- I met him a total of four times. Yet we imprinted ourselves on each other. I always asked after his health whenever I would talk to my relatives there. And they'd let me know how he always inquired about "that nice boy who chatted with me the one time." We met four times yet for some reason we remembered each other and always asked after each other.
Yeah, it got to me too.
आवता जन्ममा मलीसू दादा।
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