Tragic news

Late this evening, just around 11 pm, I was expecting a guest from Bangalore, India. "Tiny" S. Mazumdar, formerly of Hindustan Lever, a friend of Ashok Kunte, who is a IIT classmate of Cathedralite 59er Elijah Elias (Ooky), my long-standing family friend from my Bombay days.

Tiny must have been just planning to leave his Bangalore office en route to the airport to fly in to Helsinki. He would then have proceeded to the Helsinki Railway Station to enjoy the train trip to Oulu.

His visit to Finland was to see for himself conditions here as his son has been admitted to Kuopio University in Eastern Finland to do a course in biotechnology.

Tiny's stopover in Oulu was to meet me and see what my opinion was about his son's stay in Finland, and to possibly help Tiny get a leverage into the Gherkin market as he is a large exporter to Russia. I had organised lunch at a friend's restaurant along with other friends of mine in his line of business.

This morning, just as I visited my email site, there was a message from Ashok Kunte in Thane telling me that Tiny had been murdered in his office yesterday afternoon.

I had just had an email yesterday from Tiny that he had managed to get me some home-made Kerala papadams.

Over the last few weeks we had become quite close friends as we had spoken on many issues for many hours using Skype Voice Over Internet. He had become an avid reader of all my blogs.

I will miss a good friend I made in the recent weeks and it will take some time for me to recover from this shock. My deepest condolences to his family and friends.