when your past catches up with your present and memories bring a smile to your face

Many eons ago (or "A long time ago") on a cold and rainy afternoon, a boy read a story about a shepherd who would guide crippled planes back over the dark and foggy North Sea. The rain was pattering on the tin roof. A glass of hot tea, quickly turning lukewarm, was in his hand as he read and reread the story. He mused that his elder brother, Adarsh Nath Segal, had told him the story.

Then, he walked out of the school library into the warm sunlight and walked up to his house. He saw Nainital and the plains stretched out like a postcard just behind the Government House. As he looked out, he fell into thought and enjoyed the warm sun.

Years later, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, the same boy turned on the TV, put on Disney Hotstar, and found the same story as a movie there:

https://www.hotstar.com/in/movies/the-shepherd/1260154875

In a perhaps coincidental turn of events, he was going to a meet at 7:00 PM with some 20 of his old school students. Is the world round, or is this a coincidence? Is there even such a thing as coincidence? If only we knew... the  paheli puzzle called life. Perhaps Longfellow (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) said it best 

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend

But the story does not end there riffling through the pages of an old edition of Reader Digest, guess what I found ?  The same story. The story is called The Shepherd is a 1975 novella by British writer Frederick Forsyth(I am a great fan of his works ) The Shepherd relates the story of a De Havilland Vampire pilot flying home from RAF Celle in northern Germany to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk on Christmas Eve 1957, when his aircraft suffers a complete electrical failure mid-flight.

However, if my memory serves me right, the story as told to me by my elder brother was much better, the way he would add sound effects, the man deserved to be on the radio. Unfortunately, the world never got to hear him. I can still hear the way he told me the difference between a jet engine and a twin-engine propeller aircraft made of wood. My elder brother was Google even before Google was aware that it is Google. Suffice it to say, the sound brought my mother into the room to see what we were doing, but that is another story. The art of storytelling in an era when elder brothers taught you how to ride a cycle, walk, and bullied you into buying books they wanted. (Reader, don't worry, I have spent the last 30 years gifting him things that want and then keeping them. All my mobile phones are a gift to him:-)), apart from taking you on scooter rides where they banged up the scooter and both of uS were supposed to hide it (a blog on this later). Ahh, what a time it was, what a time...