Back to school!

“I dreamt about you day and night those days,” mediaperson Monojit Lahiri told his former classmate, who blushed. He was meeting her after a gap of 45 years at a school reunion in Lonavla.

He recalls, “We last met as 10-year-olds and were now in our late 50s. We were children then and most of us had grandchildren now.” His wife, initially hesitant to accompany him was embraced in the all-inclusive warmth. He adds, “In a cynical, sceptical world, a reunion is a journey into the days of innocence. It’s a reaffirmation of the human spirit and makes you believe in all that is warm, true and genuine. You meet at a purely emotional level, with no vested interests. You don’t care how much money the other’s making.”

Monojit’s in regular touch with 40 of his former Rishi Valley classmates now, mostly over email. He’s not the only one. In the age of social networking, it’s easy to bump into old friends in cyberspace. It’s not uncommon to have former classmates go down memory lane in groups on Facebook as they lock dates for a reunion. The batch of 1988 from Bangalore’s Sacred Hearts Girls’ High School goes down memory lane, recalling eating ‘stick-jaw’ in the school canteen, salted green mangoes and eagles swooping down to make away with their lunches. Another remembers the little experiences that made school special, when a teacher handed her the exam paper, having given her five extra marks. After a moral tussle, she decided to tell her teacher. “But surprisingly, Mrs Clement said ‘Honesty pays’ and I was back to my seat with the same marks and a lighter heart. God bless her.”

Actor Amitabh Bachchan blogged about the whirlwind of emotions he experienced when he met up with former classmates at Sherwood in Nainital. He wrote, “This is a lifetime. A lifetime of incredible passage of time. Of incredible moments and events. Events that built you into what you are today.”

He adds, “..We are back to addressing each other by our pet names — Tich and Baj and Zaf and Gingi — nothing’s changed. We are grey-haired, spectacled, bald and wrinkled, generously paunched and heavier, our movements slow and laboured, we have our wives with us and some of us, our sons and sons-in-law and grandsons, but… We are the Class of 1958 and we are back in school!”

Putting up videos of past reunions online or photographs in school t-shirts, revisiting the age of innocence was never easier! Before her primary school reunion after 25 years, Thanga Mani Mudaliar worried about whether she had put on too much weight or was doing well enough professionally, but finally realised it didn’t matter. “I realised that people put on airs at the workplace or when meeting new people but with friends who go back a long way, we remain ourselves. We had a great time!”

Says designer Preeti Ghai, “I passed out in year 1994 and we had a reunion after 16 years. There, we were not designers or professionals, just kids back in school. Now, we’re in touch regularly and a few of us often get together for coffee.”

Shares Sumita Thapar, “It will be 25 years since we left school next year and the batch is planning a grand reunion. For over a decade, we’ve been in touch first through e-groups, then Facebook. Many of us are in touch, and we span the continents.” Adds Shirin Abbas, “The Loreto Convent batch of ’84 organised our 25th year reunion two years ago. It was a blast with friends from India and all over the world coordinating their vacations to be a part of the bash.”

An emotional Ganesh Ranganathan recalls celebrating Teachers’ Day after 40 years in his alma mater, “It was not a mere reunion, but a homage that we paid to our teachers. The gesture of an over 60-year-old man bending down to touch the feet of his former teachers (now in their eighties) was very moving. The programme started with my taking the mike as the MC. And, when I started to speak, I noticed that it was 10 am, when the school would have normally started its working day with the bell. I said to the audience ‘Friends, it’s 10 am and, if you recall, the bell is struck at this hour. ..What would you have done at this moment…?’ One voice from the back said, ‘We would have wished ‘Good morning’.” That’s when nearly 500 voices rose in crescendo to recreate the moment, to wish their former teachers. When it ended after several minutes, the entire audience burst into tears.

Nothing like a trip back in time to connect with what made us who we really are! 

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-21/man-woman/29911632_1_school-reunion-classmates-memory-lane