Was it a College Reunion or a big fat Indian wedding? – Part 2

Narrated till now

Engineering batch mates came together for a silver jubilee year reunion. The morning session of honoring the teachers got over successfully and the evening cultural bash was about to start. Deepa told me that the video messages sent by the batch mates who could not make it to the event, were missing.

Narration continues…

As requested by Manisha, I gave her my laptop.

She told “I will download the messages from the SnehaSangama Culturals page in face book. Please keep the messages part in the later half of the programme”.

It was a huge relief for us. I looked at Deepa and she smiled.

I walked to the center of the stage with the mike and said “Good Evening Davanagere.

Friends it has been a Tsunami of emotions since morning. We are yet to come to terms with the fact that 25 years have passed since we graduated from this engineering college.

For the past six months we have been chatting with one another in Whats App group and we got converted to 19-20 year old friends. It was as if we were sitting on the steps of the new block of the college hostel laughing and making merry.

We have taken our own journeys in life and are successful. We have nice families and kids. We have loads of responsibilities as we are in mid life period and have many mid life crises to handle.

Now is the time to forget all that. This evening is our evening. Let us enjoy to the fullest. We have group songs, ramp walks, dances, mimicry and much more. The performers are from our batch and the talent is from within our batch”.

The group song which had won us many awards was recreated by four of us along with our beloved Professor Dr. B.T.Achutha. At seventy years, he looked fitter and trimmer than majority of us.

 

The highlight was the ramp walk. It was planned in such a way that all the 95 batch mates got a chance to hit the ramp.

High decibel music, eye catching graphics on the LED screen in the back motivated the batch mates to enjoy and walk the ramp.

The audience erupted into huge applause when Preeti started walking on the ramp. She had told age to take a walk. She looked gorgeous. Not just Preeti but each and every male and female batch mate looked fabulous and made the evening a memorable one.

The fantabulous mimicry by Vishnu Bhat, the hilarious comedy by Sampanna and the compelling steps in the dance by Sudhakar and S.T.Patil left the audience spell bound.

After about three hours of nonstop entertainment the curtains were drawn down.

The next day morning we had breakfast networking with our batch mates and few of them became emotional. It was quiet obvious as the extent of fellowship we enjoyed during the two days of meet was incomparable. Hordes of Selfies and Groupies were taken. Deepa and team handed over the well framed group photos, the previous day events video and photos DVDs, mementos and  bags to all the batch mates.

I was relieved that the reunion went on like a well written script. I started the car and hit the highway to Bangalore.

It was raining heavily.

I parked my car in the parking area of a motel near Hiriyur and we went inside to have our lunch.

My wife looked at me and said “It was not a college reunion”

“Why? What was it?” I questioned her.

“It was no less than a big fat Indian wedding” she replied.

I smiled and started checking mails in my smart phone.

There was a pleasant surprise for me. A purchase order had come from my customer. I was perusing the same for the past few weeks and was a bit concerned due to tough competition.

I looked at my wife and kids. They were busy having their lunch.

I looked out at the lush green environment draped in heavy rain and said to myself “I have to change gears so fast. Few hours ago I was drowned in memories and lively moments with friends and now have the responsibility of executing the big order placed by the customer.

Miles to go before I sleep, Miles to go before I sleep.”

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…

Problem for every solution – Part 2

Narrated till now

Mandira faces difficult situations very often in her life. She starts believing that there is a problem in every solution she gets. A naturopathy camp was being held . Me and Mandira were participants in it. An interesting lecture about better living practices was scheduled and we started walking towards the lecture hall.

Narration continues

We entered the lecture hall and took our respective seats. The podium was on a raised platform. I exchanged pleasantries with others seated in the hall.

The hall erupted into a spontaneous applause as the speaker made his way to the podium. He looked very fit and handsome. We could make out that he was a very intelligent man.

He smiled at us and started “Friends, good evening. My name is Akhilesh Kashyap and I am here today to talk to you about life and the way it is to be lived.

I am neither a guru nor a very learned man. I am an ordinary guy who has gone through lot of bad patches in life.

You know me as an IIT, IIM pass out. You do not know the other side of me. I was a miserable failure in love at IIT, almost ruined my IIM studies due to my drinking habit and later changed three companies in my first year of working.

I know the pains of life better as I have not been a successful person always. Regular failures and never ending problems in a particular phase of life have made me stronger and I owe my success to the failures I had”.

The audience was spell bound listening to his speech and there was pin drop silence in the hall. This guy had mesmerized the people.

I could see Mandira watching him with a glow on her face. I understood that she was relating her problems to what Akhilesh was talking about.

He went on for the next half an hour telling and explaining how things go wrong in life and what one should do to spring back from failures and head towards success.

He continued “Let us speak about your mobile and the contact list. You regularly speak with people in the contact list. You are in constant touch with the world.

Have you ever tried calling your own number? You will get busy tone.

What does that indicate? We are available to talk to every person we know but for ourselves we are not. We are busy. We need to change this.

Start looking inwards. There is an answer for your problem and you get it within you. You should spend time with yourself. Most of the problems we face are due to our ego. We feel we are somebody.
Start reading good and motivational books. Understand the reality of life. You will soon find that you are nobody. In this vast expanse of universe you are nothing but a small speck. At this phase your ego crashes and you will start accepting things as they are.

You start feeling that you belong to the universe and the universe belongs to you. Then you synchronize with everybody.

This journey from ‘Somebody to Nobody to Everybody’ is not an easy one but the journey is worth it.

Everyone clapped and after another fifteen minutes of talk, he finished the lecture.

I and Mandira went out of the hall and after checking out from our respective rooms, walked towards my car.

The lecture was the last leg of the Naturopathy camp and I found it very useful.

The resort in which we had the camp was about thirty kilometers away from the city and I hit the highway within minutes of driving.

I got a call on my mobile and I switched on the blue tooth speakers of the car. It was virat.

“Hi virat how are you man?” I said.

“I am fine dude. Where is Mandira? I am trying her phone and she is not answering “

Mandira quickly opened her purse and took her phone out. She had kept it in silent mode.

She answered virat “Sorry dear I had kept it in silence mode and forgot to increase the volume”

“I am eager to share good news with you. I have got a job and am joining from first of next month” virat said.

After the call got over I looked at Mandira. She was looking thrilled. Her husband who had lost his job got a new one. She told me “I think we need to understand that time heals everything”

I added “That is life Mandira. Today morning you were feeling very low and told me about the problems you get out of every solution you search for.

Now it looks that you have started unknotting your problems and slowly but steadily end up having none”.

She smiled and said “One more big knot is remaining. It is my Whats App friend Rohit. I shall call him now and patch up with him. Poor guy he would have felt bad due to my response”

Saying so she called Rohit and started speaking to him.

Problem for every solution – Part 1

Mandira closed her eyes, sat on the stone wall and stretching her hands on the wall took a deep breath.

She felt it very different as she had not experienced the taciturnity for a long period. The occasional twiddle of a bird and the whiff of fresh air was an ebullient feeling.

 After about five minutes, she opened her eyes and looked around. The atmosphere was very  peaceful  and a far cry from the cacophony of the concrete jungle she was used to.

She had taken time off from her tight professional schedule and was attending a week long rejuvenation course of naturopathy.

Nothing was going right for her since the past few months. A job loss for her husband meant more pressure on her financially. Virat had his tech skills in place but being in the IT industry, he had to face the music since projects had dried up in the company he worked for.

She had seen many seasons in her life but this was the toughest. Mid life blues had set it.

 Nisha was in the tenth standard and needed more focused attention. She was good in her academics but being in the top five in her class was not enough given the high competition amongst kids in India.

Namith was doing OK in his sixth standard studies but handling a Tweenager boy was not a cake walk as his demands and expectations were growing exponentially. Internet and free flow of undesirable information available to him was a matter of concern to her.

I saw her sitting on the stone wall staring at the lush green trees.

 I walked up to her and said “Hi”

She looked back and replied “Hi, come and sit here. It is very scenic and peaceful ”.

I sat next to her and said “How are you feeling now?”

“I am feeling better ” she remarked.

 “That sounds good. But you look a bit worried “I said.

She looked at me and said “I do not know why it is happening this way. I am trying to find solution to the problems I am facing. Unfortunately, a problem surfaces out of every solution I get”

I nodded and said “This is true and happens with everyone at some point of life. It is more so when one is on the wrong side of thirties.

This is the age when responsibilities are more and no one will be available for hand holding and we do not get a shoulder to rest our troubled heads. I have also gone through such a phase and now I have changed attitude towards life.

The ambition phase of our lives is ending and with lot of responsibilities unfolding it becomes an age of Mission. We need to work not just for ourselves but for many of our family members.”

She continued “I do not know how I will be able to handle the problems that are coming to me regularly”

 I replied “Look at the situation differently. The problems you face in your life are like a series of knots. You cannot unknot all of them at one go. Have patience and start with the first knot. Slowly but steadily keep unknotting one at a time and you will end up coming out of them”

She got an alert on What App. She looked at the message and told me “This is the biggest knot I have right now”

I asked her “What is it?”

“This guy called Rohit is my colleague in office. He keeps sending me messages on Whats App. I get turned off whenever I see his message”

I asked her “Can I see the messages he has sent?”

She gave the mobile to me and after going through the messages I said “He is very apologetic and he wants to talk to you to clarify that he does not intent to pester you. Please reply him and close the issue once for all”

She was in no mood to listen to me. We sat silently for the next five minutes.

I broke the silence and said  “Let us move now. We have a very good lecture to attend. The guy is from IIT, IIM background and he is speaking about living life the way it should be lived”.

We got up and proceeded towards the lecture hall.