General Discussion & Chat: Met my penfriend, at last!, 1 by Dinu

Dinu wrote:
Whatever you call: "the black and white" or "slim and fat"... we are friends. Meet the man in red shirt. He is a professor in agricultural sciences in the prestigious Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. He lives in a city called Coimbatore which is about 120 miles from here. He has been to the US twice for research. The picture ws taken two years ago in his city where I had been on official duty for 3 days. I had made it a point to meet him.

The common hobby of radio listening and stamp collecting had brought us together 21 years ago and had exchanged numerous letters as pen-friends. I wonder, by this meeting, we cease to be "pen-friends"??

Here is how we met. I had called him and told him where we stayed (a hotel). We had mutually agreed to meet at a particular time. We had not seen each other at all. How do we recognize? I was walking out near my hotel that evening with my colleague and at that scheduled time, I saw a man in red shirt coming in the opposite direction. In that instant, the picture he had sent me some years ago, flashed through my mind (he had more hair in that pic!) and I knew for sure it was him. I called out his name as he passed by. He stopped after a couple of metres, surprised! He wondered how I could recognize him without any clues!

We went to our room and had a long chat on various things. Luckily, my other colleague had his camera and we could take this picture to remember our 'historic' meeting. In a nearby hotel, he hosted me dinner and then we departed, promising more letters to be exchanged. But then, that has never happened, due to obvious reasons - both of us having growing families. He is older to me by 6 years.

I have another penfriend in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta, was the old spelling). But we have spoken over phone about 3-4 times, but still haven't met, even though I was in his city last year to play cricket. Kolkata is almost 3 days rail journey from Mysore. I had a few in India and abroad too, but all of them have ceased to write letters since long. Only one retired Captain of Marine company in Ecuador (South America) is in touch besides these two. I can tell you, penfriendship is really interesting from which we can learn a lot of beautiful things.