Freshly brewed kaapi

A few days ago when I was blog-surfing, I came across this site. Given my predilection for anything related to coffee, I found its name 'Instant Kaapi', rather inviting. A few seconds at the site left me with a broad grin and misty eyes. I had just discovered a lost pal!

Hemanth and I used to sit in the same cabin a few years ago, the backs of our heads and our chairs facing each other while we carried on conversations about interesting trivia and tried to work at the same time. "Hemanth is not at his desk. May I take a message?", I had said those words several hundred times as the man's popularity attracted umpteen phone calls and personal visits to his desk.

On many late nights at work, I had cheered myself by looking at the giant size Michael Jordan poster that Hemanth had pasted on the glass wall to create some privacy for himself. I had shaken my head in amusement at his vast collection of memorabilia proudly displayed all around his work area.

There were moments of admiration every morning when he added new stuff to 'Pipeline' - the intranet site that he ran from his desktop. Mastermind and puzzle books used to be strewn around his machine often and every now and then he would suddenly turn around and say, "did you know that..."

Once he dragged along a very reluctant me to a Corporate India in the twenty-first century (something like that) presentation contest along with his close pal Pradeep (locate "The Catcher in the Rye" in that page to find Pradeep). And the preparation for that presentation had us in splits. Every time we tried to mock-present, one of us would say something funny and it would end up being a mocking session rather than a presenting session.

There were many such moments with Hemanth; moments that were fun, moments that were infuriating but moments that are fondly remembered. A delightful extrovert and a man of many talents, Hemanth was great company. So imagine my glee when I located him by sheer chance.

This little note is probably going to embarrass the man, but hey, my paean is sincere and everyone can use some publicity. Particularly a budding filmmaker.