When grown ups trip back!

Seven colors White!

It all happened too fast.

Last year around this time I got a call out of the blue from a class mate with whom I last spoke couple of decades back.

Her call was part of a large search operation to locate college batch mates of a particular year and bring them on board for a grand reunion planned one year down the line.

The call was followed up by a Whatsapp Invitation to a group that was buzzing like honey bees, non stop, 24*7; all batch mates discovering one another after a long gap adding fizz to the buzz.

Chats, exchange of phone numbers and many happy calls later, I decided to join the party.

Most of my batch mates live in abroad and most of them have not visited our Alma Mater after leaving it for the world. Hence their buzz was quite strong.

Since I live in the same city where I studied, I keep visiting the Institute at times with reason and some times just for the feel. Hence the buzz was just not there.

As the event drew nearer, I was getting more and more subsumed by the so many threads of activities I was running after and almost decided not to join the rest on D day.

Just a couple of days to go and something strange started happening; something hidden deep inside me, covered by so many layers of life lived in the last so many years, started peeling off with a quiet rumble and...I just could not fall asleep in the night!

The reunion group started spitting out images of happy faces travelling in from all over the world, accompanied by running commentary all through and my insomnia grew worse. Honestly I was not even that excited when I fell in love, when my kids were born etc...This was unique.

The Plan was to spend a few hours in campus on day 1, retire in a cozy place for the rest of the day and disband the morning after.

The day arrived. Time for the multiple colors of rainbow (the symbol of our reunion) to get back to the pure white state that was us then, so many years back.

Few hundred Engineers who flew in from all corners of the world became 'wide eyed kids in the campus' again and the kind of love and affection that swept us all were unbelievable.

Some of us have grown older, lost hair, bulked up, thinned down - nothing mattered! 

There are words and phrases (Dei / Maams / Machi) that we would have used during our college days and buried them deep under once we moved on with formal world and its signature callouts like Sir / Boss / Madam / Pal / Bro. But then when the instant we met with our ilk, those phrases started flowing like rivers everywhere, in fact overflowing with so much joy, hugs, punches, slaps in the back etc...

We walked around the campus, which is slowly and steadily falling apart as times have changed and with it the values too (you see, education is a business, not a service anymore. Government is not in the business of running this revered institution anymore...), took pictures in all those places we used to hang around, including our class rooms! It was a totally immersive, wonderful experience...

An event management team was brought in to manage the entire event supervised by a core group of our batch mates. Turned out to be a thoroughly professional event with well planned souvenirs, a reunion magazine, Tee with rubber print of the short name of our institute et. al.

Post lunch, the party shifted to a five star hotel in the city (I am sure they would have never seen such a large number of Forty something kids dancing around in joy, ramp walking, karoaking and making the place their own).

I couldn't join them at the floor; price I paid for living close to the venue and having some loose ends to tie over the same period...tsss...tsss.

I didn't miss much because I was glued to my mobile, gulping every snippet that was popping up in Whatsapp almost like live streaming!

The party left the city the day after but our folks have carried the spirit of it to all corners of the globe from where they congregated and continue spreading the joy to those who couldn't join by meeting them in small local groups.

We made some serious observations about the poor state of affairs at our Alma mater and decided to 'do something, anything' to fix it.

To those joyous moments in our lives that would bring a smile whenever we reflect upon them, this event added one more, a bit goofier than the rest :-)

Sample this: A Forty something guy nudging his batch mate to talk to a Forty something girl 'Machi, at least now introduce yourself to her and talk a few words da'!!!!!!

Since I missed the souvenir collection event at the hotel, a friend picked it up for me and delivered it when I met him in the Campus a week later. A batch mate with an elephantine memory came out with a book that was released during this occasion. It recounted so many laugh-out-loud moments, I had to extend a 'few minutes' reading break that I took while driving back from my institute into few hours under a shady tree, laughing like a kid, totally pulled back into those wonder years. It was a time machine trip well worth!