Reunion 50 - Genesis
How it
happened
“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.
-William Wordsworth
Homesick for school. Boarders are understandably home-sick; for home. But years after passing out, being home sick for school! You know that unfortunate girl who was kidnapped and held captive in Sweden? She wasn’t the one who first showed signs of the Stockholm Syndrome. This symptom was prevalent for ages, across continents — in boarding school students.
So here we are, mooning over the walls that held us many moons ago. 601 moons ago, to be specific. In a silvery re-living as much as a golden re-union.
It all started about 5 years ago with a phone call. I enquired politely, “Kaun be?” “Halbe.” “Oh, that earnest Nagarjuna chap!” Like a relentless telemarketer, he called many classmates thus. Yes, Halbe became the trigger of our batch’s regrouping ‘anand.’
Some of us gathered at Ramesh Ramayya’s place, the famous urology centre. Aptly, we were piss-drunk. Those who could not be in Hyderabad, attended digitally with rheumatoid digits. The 71 ISC Whatsapp group was formed. (There’s no substance in the rumour that Facebook bought Whatsapp because of this. The purchase predated the group by a couple of years).
In the December of 2019, the idea of having a reunion to mark 50 years of graduation from HPS was mooted. By the 1st week of March, 2020, we had finalised a programme and tentative dates (Jan 2021). The earth quaked at the very thought of us getting together. A series of lockdowns were declared by wary governments around the world to thwart us. So, though the Whatsapp group was active, all talk of the re-union went into a quarantine.
Towards the end of August, 2021, Pol’s gentle word’s, “Buggers, we are no spring chickens, but bald eagles. So get on with the get-together, rascals!” rustled our feathers again. We took wing. And the happening finally hapened!