“I don’t eat people you know!“
Comments he, while I pace up and run to the other side of
the floor for the stairs, wondering how stupid I can be to not know which floor
is his room on. (I was responsible for
the room allotment and hospitality of guests in the guest house. My job was to
know where room 214 is.)
I turn back to look at him and find him laughing! I immediately realize, maybe, the person, the lead developer of VLC, who we
have so desperately wanted to be a part of our Lecture Series for the past
year, is a really chilled and nice person (also not a cannibal).
I was so right about the nice part. No hassles and an
altogether PhD in humbleness. He added to every conversation we had over lunch
a very new dimension. I was pretty amazed when he pointed out why I was using
Madras instead of Chennai and Bombay instead of Mumbai. This guy had done his homework
about India very well.
How cool a guy must be if we had posters as Jean Kempf everywhere
when his name was Jean-Baptiste Kempf. Very cool. Our Aththi Devo Bhavo theory
wasn’t enough to convince him to call him Sir. We finally settled for JB. Any other
suffixed name was agreed to not be acknowledged.
His lecture must have been damn-you-if-you-missed
event. I had to because we were managing
our mini-hotel. He dropped by late at night, while we were preparing for the
next day. What followed was a wonderful and frank and entertaining as hell
conversation that ran till 4 AM.
His stories were complete with crazy hand gestures and sound
effects. He didn’t mind pausing in between when we had to work a bit, just
reminding me how accommodating and understanding he is. The food was sponsored by him, ‘back- up’ food
as he called it. Chocolates and cakes, since spicy Indian food is not exactly
his thing.
The early next morning, we had our own photoshoot, which definitely
did not involve any of us standing in formal poses. When I waved him goodbye, it struck me, how
just 24 hours before, I stood at the same spot, rehearsing my “Bonjour Monsieur”
nervously. And 24 hours later, we gave him bear hugs (and back up food) to a
say good bye to our amazing new friend who just happened to have developed VLC.
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