Jab We Met: Then and Now

By Dr Mukund Naware

Reunion in California – July 2026

When we met now

It was a wonderful gathering of both our families.

Pramod Kumar (PK) Sinha had come with his wife Renu and was staying at their daughter Shilpa’s place. When I learnt that this old friend of mine was only thirty minutes away, I looked forward to the first available opportunity to meet him with my family. The meeting, however, depended entirely on the convenience of our children. As a result, we finally managed to meet on 11 July 2026, exactly at 7 p.m., at Shilpa’s residence. My son Vidyut drove us there.

We were meeting after a gap of seventeen years, while our children and their families were meeting for the first time. Present that evening were Pramod Kumar Sinha and Mrs Renu Sinha, their daughter Shilpa and son-in-law Shashi, and their twin children Ansh and Anshi. With me were Mrs Preeti, our son Vidyut and daughter-in-law Sarika, and their twin daughters Radha and Meera. Precisely a dozen of us gathered for a grand evening.

We began with a warm embrace, followed by coconut water as a welcome drink. Then came cucumber slices with dips, samosas, and later a meal of noodles, naans, paneer masala, gobhi sabzi, vegetable biryani and more, ending with ice cream. More importantly, there was a continuous flow of old memories that we shared with our family members, who listened with great curiosity. Time flew, and when we left Shilpa’s place it was already 10.30 p.m.

As I returned home, my thoughts went back to the days when Pramod Kumar and I had first met at Anand — more than half a century ago.

Jab we met then

Flashback: Anand, February 1972

It was almost the end of February 1972. We had been selected as Apprentice Officers by NDDB and asked to join by 1 March. I joined on 25 February and Pramod Kumar a day later. Belawadi had already joined on the 24th. Together we formed a batch of sixteen apprentices. Subhash Malhotra and Ram Singh Rathi had joined a month earlier and were immediately attached to a team already working in the Rohtak milkshed. The rest — Narendra Vashi, Ramesh Makrandi, Watford, B.K. Patnaik, T.S. Charulu, Anupam Burman, A. Padmanabhan, N. Sremannarayan and others — joined before the last date. We were ready for a full year of training.

From 1 March we were sent to Amul Dairy to learn the basics of organising dairy societies, procuring milk through them, and providing animal husbandry services to milk producers. In those days, staying in the NDDB hostel was compulsory unless one was posted to villages or a project. We all went through this mix of arrangements. The time we spent in the NDDB hostel remains unforgettable.

Before joining NDDB I had already put in two years of service, mainly with BAIF. Pramod Kumar was just a semester short of completing his M.V.Sc. in microbiology, but he left it halfway to join NDDB. For each of us the opportunity felt like winning a state lottery. On completion of apprenticeship we were to be appointed on the pay scale of ₹400–950 — a dream come true in those days. Even government servants coveted it. During apprenticeship our monthly stipend itself was ₹400, a sum equal to a full month’s salary for many.

On the first day of every month we collected our stipend inside the NDDB administrative building from George K. On other days we were not supposed to be seen in the campus buildings, having been assigned to Amul Dairy — a mark of discipline. The only exception was the hostel where we lived. Each of us had a separate room with a common washroom between two rooms. Every room had a cot, mattress, blanket and pillow, and laundry was taken care of. The monthly charge for lodging was ₹105.

For boarding we received bed tea at the door at 6 a.m. in a thermos, followed by breakfast at 8 a.m. in the dining hall — bread, butter, jam, eggs in various styles, cornflakes and milk. Lunch and dinner offered a variety of vegetables (fried or in gravy), salad, dal, rice, chapatis, curd and pickles. Afternoon tea was also available if desired. The total monthly boarding charge was ₹150, or roughly ₹5 a day.

Thus lodging and boarding together cost us ₹255 a month, leaving each of us with ₹145 for personal needs. I still remember one weekend — 7 May (Tagore’s birth anniversary) — when Belawadi and I went to Baroda just to see the city and spend a little money. I bought a beautiful Mexicana model Murphy transistor (which I named Ravindra) and Belawadi bought a Bajaj electric iron. Both items later proved useful to the whole group: the iron circulated among the rooms and the transistor entertained everyone within earshot.

In Memoriam

One day three or four of us went to Kachins Tailors on the main road of Anand market, selected cloth and gave measurements for shirts and pants. As we came out we saw A.K. Ray Choudhary, the Secretary of NDDB, with his family. He enquired what we were doing. On being told we had given clothes for stitching, he exclaimed, “That means we are giving you more stipend!” We remembered that remark and realised how carefully money was valued in that foundation year. By today’s calculation, ₹400 of 1972 would equal only about four and a quarter US dollars, yet in those days it was enough for a full month.

Meeting Again – 26 July 2026

After that first gathering it was natural for us to have a reciprocal meeting at my son’s place.

Jab we met again, the mutually agreed date was 26 July 2026. Thanks to GPS, they arrived precisely at 7.15 p.m. Shashi and Shilpa came in their car with Pramod Kumar and Renu. The grandchildren Ansh and Anshi abstained, which we accepted as the way of the new generation. From our side the entire family was at home, and our granddaughters participated to some extent. Mostly it was an interactive evening among the four couples — the two older ones and the two in middle age.

We began with masala lassi as a welcome drink, followed by tortilla chips (nachos) with salsa. As we ate, we refreshed our memories of the good old days in Anand and later in the Rohtak team under the leadership of Dr Chothani and then Mithilesh Kumar Sinha. We recalled how Makrandi, Vashi, Watford, Pramod Kumar and I had stayed together in Kalanaur Kalan area, and how three of us later camped in a village called Lath where Makrandi and Pramod Kumar even cooked our food. I also mentioned that even after our appointment as Assistant Executives, Pramod Kumar, Belawadi, Burman and I had shared an apartment in Anand, where Burman and Pramod Kumar sometimes cooked. It was common for us to go to the market for vegetables and run into Shailendra Kumar carrying his child on his shoulders, or R.K. Nagar. These were fond memories for us, but for the Sinha family it came as a revelation that Pramod Kumar had ever known how to cook.

We then had a good dinner — chapatis, bharwa baingan, aloo sabzi, green salad, rice, dal tadka, followed by rasmalai. Throughout the meal we continued talking about the past. Our common journey had begun in 1972–73; thereafter we worked on different projects and in different regional offices, and finally both of us left NDDB to join the State Dairy Federations of our respective states.

In between, our wives gently brought us back to the present. They shared their view that although the two of us had given so much time and energy to our work, what the families received in return had often fallen short of expectations. And that we were able to meet here now only because of our children. That, we could not deny.

That evening we also remembered many colleagues who have passed away — S.P. Mittal, P.B. Raut, P.G. Gore, Manubansh, Gaur — and spoke of those whose whereabouts we still know. By the time they left it was 11 p.m. Shilpa carried home a box of lemons, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, passion fruit and blackberries grown by Sarika in her kitchen garden. Pramod Kumar and I hugged each other and said goodbye, not knowing when we would meet again.

In the end I must say that after seventeen years Pramod Kumar and I have met here in California, in the United States, thanks entirely to our children. They have been happily settled here for the last twenty to twenty-five years. For all that they have achieved, we are simply grateful to God.

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