Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Sunday Lunch with Vinod

Hello All…

This Sunday was eventful and the first part will remain long in memory. After a long delay, I finally found some time on Sunday to invite Vinod Ekbote to my home for lunch. Vinod had expressed his desire to see my fountain pen collection long back and I was looking for a convenient day and time. Vinod was slightly uneasy about the ‘lunch’ thing and he tried to persuade me to convert it to a ‘tea’ thing and brought in his ‘not to be missed Sunday Abids trip’ to convince me, but I insisted and he finally agreed and from the mail I received from him after his visit, I firmly feel that he didn’t mind the time he spent with us…

In all senses, Vinod is really the softest spoken person I’ve met so far… I showed him my basic library and the fountain pens…he had brought his Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 149 with him and I got another chance to admire a Mont Blanc in close range…we spent around 3 hrs talking and exchanging notes on mutual interests – fountain pens, books, education, writing…Shruti joined in too and Vinod was fascinated by the work/research Shruti was doing in the field of acquisition studies…Vinod had a lot of questions to ask about dyslexia, cognition, language acquisition, etc., and the discussion went on for almost one hour…Vinod is intrigued by the writing process and though he writes frequently and has just finished writing his book (a novel), he wants to fine tune his writing skills and he has written about this in his posts in his blog…also wants to attend a course in creative writing…he said he is a part of a group of likeminded people who are interested in writing and meet regularly and invited me join this group…I will do so and look forward to interacting with them…

I had a gift for Vinod, an Advocate FP…I had told him about this earlier…but I was surprised and happy to receive a stunning Mont Blanc catalogue commemorating 100 years of the brand and Dave Barry’s book – Dave Barry is NOT making this up – a collection of this Pulitzer Winning humourist’s columns…Shruti received a beautiful notebook…I’ve already started reading Dave Barry’s book and it really provides you bellyfuls of laughter…I wondered how I missed Dave Barry’s books all these years…Thanks, Vinod… for visiting us and for all those thoughtful gifts…and hope we meet again soon for an extended discussion session…

Jayasrinivasa Rao

1 comment:

Vinod Ekbote said...

Jai, I'm flattered by all the attention I am getting on this blog. it is also a bit embarrassing :-) Thanks for the fountain pen and the lunch and of course, for all the good things you've written about me!!!

Vinod