Was it a College Reunion or a big fat Indian wedding? – Part 1

“You are looking like the brother of the bride ready to welcome the groom’s relatives” Deepa said.

I was standing in the portico of the function hall ready to welcome my friends. We were celebrating our Engineering college reunion. 25 years had passed since we graduated.

Deepa, Manisha, Gopal  and their big event management team had done a wonderful job arranging the reunion.

 “ Very true Deepa. We have been interacting with many  of our batch mates daily in the Whats App group since January 3^rd and it is like one full semester being completed . Now the felling is like that of taking the final exam” I said.

Manisha chipped in “ I have been a silent spectator in your group and I should admit the energy levels amongst your batch mates in unimaginable. Am sure that you guys have more energy, bonding and enjoy fellowship better than others”.

I continued “ The synergy created has been phenomenal. Batch mates have come from all over India, Middle east, Oceania, Far east , Europe and the US. ”

The buses started arriving. I asked the Rajasthani Dhol team to start beating the drums . Guys started getting out of the buses and they were dancing , jumping and hugging one another. Could see Ghatti, Jaya Rao, Sampanna, Vishnu, Santosh, Raghavendra, Azhar, Umesh to name a few.

The lady batch mates arrived in separate cars and soon we all formed a big circle holding one another hands and started dancing to the drum beats.

It was about 11.15 Am and the L113 room in the college was filled by our batch mates. We had assembled to honor our teachers. Many of them had retired and we had requested them to attend the function and they had traveled from Bangalore and other places.

When I made the opening note, I could not hold my feelings back. This was the same hall wherein some two and half decades ago we competed in various cultural competitions. We used to go to the podium to participate in elocution, debates and skits. Today I was standing on the same dais but twenty five years older and wiser.

We honored our teachers whose sustained efforts made us better engineers. One by one the selected few from amongst our batch mates came and started talking about their experiences with the teachers during their study days.

Guys were very informative and witty. Be it Santosh with his unequivocal narration of life during engineering days, Azhar with his astound recital of verses from Manu Smrithi, Umesh with his endearing smile while explaining the hurdles they faced in the then newly started Instrumentation Technology department, all of them were unique in their own way.

We then stood on the steps in front of the central library for a group photo. All the male batch mates were decked in white T-shirts and female batch mates in Pink jackets and the picture was perfect for a photo worth to be framed and hung on the walls of our drawing rooms. 

After lunch I reached the function hall .I had to check the final preparations for the evening cultural bash. Deepa, Manisha and their team were ready and the lighting, acoustics and promos were in place.

I was going through the book which had the flow of events. I was the anchor for the cultural programme also.

Deepa was looking concerned and I noticed it.

I asked her “Everything is OK?”

“I do not think so” she replied.

“What happened?”

“We are not able to trace the video messages sent by your batch mates who are not attending”

“This cannot happen. We have messages by guys from the US, Australia and New Zealand. We cannot complete the event without showing their messages” I replied.

We called Manisha.

I told her “It is already 6.30 PM and we have to start the event. What shall we do?”

She too looked clueless and I was sure that some of our batch mates would be perturbed.

To be continued…