Jabra headsets.

I think I first met him eight years ago. It must have been a junior-senior interaction session for the SIA scholars, and he must have been one of the wonder-eyed kids. He was one of the two Biharis, and by that association, butt of many jokes. He was the quieter of the two, but the sharper. But that was it, he wasn't in the same school and so I didn't really get to know him. We must have played schools cricket a couple of times against each other over the next two years, but I don't remember.

Our paths did cross at other times, however. It so happened that I often met him in flights to and from Delhi. This was in JC, as well as during the University years. He had gone on to NTU, and I was at NUS, and I kept running into him on journeys back home - on the flights, at the airports transiting, at the Delhi customs queue, in the Changi duty free shop. We shared a smoking room once in Bangkok's then-renovating airport. Maybe Colombo also once. Sometimes I heard of him through common friends. About his obsession with Shah Rukh Khan. How he sported SRK's Mohabbatein look for a whole semester. And then onto the next blockbuster. Maybe he was Knight Rider's fan. I don't know. I didn't know him that well. Towards the end of university and then start of work, we didn't see each other for a long time.

Then KV joined UBS and he popped up again. KV mentioned this grad trainee in his team, I recognised the name, and that was it. He was a Marinoid. Nets, games, daaru, sutta - the whole nine yards. What I remember most is that he would arrive at the ground always with his huge Jabra headsets on. He had a new Nokia thing which bluetoothed to the headsets. I was hooked to them, and he let me use it everytime I asked. Once for M3 I think he took a fiver. There was promise there and I remember Akki being an excited captain. He fitted too, not a huge persona, but an affable man. But then he disappeared again. Probably because of the pressures at work this time. Recession had hit and it had that affect on bank employees.

I did see him one last time two weekends ago. At Oosters in Suntec, I spotted the huge frame of KV, and then the headsets on the table. He was there. The two of them joined me for a ritual smoke, we talked about work and then I left. I didn't stay for a drink. It was the 25th of April.

Today he is on his final flight to Delhi, but I won't be bumping into Setu.