Reunion

At 4 PM, my phone rang. It was my friend Swaminathan on the other side. I hadn’t spoken with him for a while. I was in a meeting and neglected it. At 6 PM, it was Swami again. This time I answered it. And this time, also with him on the speakerphone was his close friend and advisor, Jignesh Patel.

“We have our silver jubilee reunion coming up,” Swami sounded excited. “Can you believe it is twenty-five years since we graduated?”

I did a quick mental calculation and realised it was, for good or bad, only 23 years. Not that such needless accuracy made a difference unless you were an engineer. Swami understood the reason for my pause. But as always, he kept speaking and did not take a pause.

“You might be wondering; it is only 23 years,” Swami started. “But we need two years to prepare. Jigneshbhai attended his commerce college reunion last year. It took them almost two years of groundwork. He says it takes time to get everyone onboard and make arrangements,” he added.

“Yes, you must start early,” Jigneshbhai concurred.

“I called you because a few of us are meeting tomorrow evening to discuss the modalities. Join us at 7 PM at our usual place,” Swami said, without letting me speak and hung up.

A college reunion after twenty-five years was an exciting prospect. I hadn’t been in touch with most of my batchmates, except a small close-knit bunch, busy as we get with life. I didn’t know what to expect. Even so, I was free that evening and joined the gang at – where else but our favourite meeting place – Jigneshbhai’s Club.

It turned out to be the start of an adventure. Apart from Swami and Jigneshbhai, there were over twenty or more middle-aged men there. They had various levels of hair on their head and different sizes of paunches on their bellies. I found it easier to identify them with the variety of drinks in their hands. It turned out that most of them were my and Swami’s batchmates from college.

“Hello, NAND-NOR, you haven’t changed.” An unknown hot cappuccino shouted aloud in my direction. It was my campus nickname that I had heard after almost two decades. I gave a startled look and walked towards him, pretending to recognize him.

After closer scrutiny, I spoke. “Is that….by any chance, … Sher-baba?” I took a tentative guess.

“Yes, it is,” the hot cappuccino howled.

Another iced café mocha barged in and more than tapped me on my shoulder. “This is Volvo, and that is Chats,” he said. A gin-and-tonic raised his glass. “This is Nags,” he said, “and that’s Srini-garu,” he pointed at a Gold-flake plus rum-and-cola.

Swami then rattled off a bunch of a dozen nicknames from the yesteryears. At each name, he pointed at one of our batchmates who was present there. I glared at each of them, mentally matching them with my historical outdated versions of them. There didn’t seem to be much of a resemblance. I needed some precise face-and-body matching tools, to be sure.

“Where is Tomi?” a whisky-soda asked. “And Chakru? Last I heard, he moved to Minnesota,” he added.

“That was seven years back, buddy. Now he is with a company in Singapore,” the cappuccino said. Many “who is where” and “who is doing what” kind of updates followed this. Some “do you still…?” questions, and “remember that….?” memories followed that.

Despite the fact that we had met after so many years, the exuberance in the air was familiar. It was as if it had been only yesterday since we left college after spending four years there together. A little bit of magic was in the air. The memories, the laughter, the profanities; the loving remarks of a bond almost forgotten; long lost events recollected. They all melted into the few hours that evening.

The evening would have gone into the night as one thing led to another. Many questions on where was someone didn’t quite get a satisfactory answer. We soon realised that there were still many outside this small group who were not traced. But we were confident that they could be traced. Someone, who was in touch with someone who they knew, would know.

“There are only six degrees of separation, after all,” a lemon iced tea reassured everyone.

“Guys let’s focus on the reunion,” Swami yelped in the cross conversations. He got no response. 

Swami then declared, “Let’s have a WhatsApp group only for this silver jubilee reunion.” That got some attention. “Things will fall in place after that,” he said. Everyone nodded in agreement, for once.

“But, by the way, isn’t two years a bit too early?” another rum-and-cola asked. “Don’t remember preparing for anything so much in advance – even supplementary exams – on campus!” he broke into a loud guffaw with a couple of others.

“Yeah, I thought we will do a night out reunion tonight,” the whisky-soda whispered.

“Oh come on. We aren’t twenty anymore,” a balding iced café mocha revolted.

“Age is only a number, forty is the new twenty,” the rum and cola countered.

“By the way when exactly are we having this? And where? And how many days? Any idea?” asked a colourful cocktail that hadn’t spoken so far. More than a dozen blank faces and a bout of awkward silence received this question. No one had any answers.

“Target August 2020, first or second week, 2 nights, 3 days,” we heard a confident, wise voice. It was Jigneshbhai, who had been observing in silence as usual. He had put a stick in the ground.

“We did our reunion at that time at our college last year,” he continued. “It works for the institute, for folks coming from abroad, and for those in India,” he asserted. “And the weather is reasonable,” he added. Experience speaks, I thought, and Swami nodded.

Swami got to work after that evening and formed the WhatsApp group. By the end of the next week, there were over a hundred of fifty of us in there. By the end of the month, we were close to two hundred and fifty. Talks of having sub-groups by branch or location had started.

Every morning I woke up with hundreds of new messages when a few more of us joined.

“Hey, welcome, where have you been?” turned out to be a great first message. “Update your profile pics guys” followed the welcome. Even after that, it often left many still wondering who the person in the profile pic was. It led to many “Can’t place your name to face! What were you called?” messages.

When an unidentified person joined, the question followed “Who is this?” and, after a barrage of cross talks and arguments, it often turned into an occasional “Who left?” every few days.

Over time, the topics changed to “When is this reunion?” to “Let’s have families too”, often leading to strong “Avoid families” arguments and “Do it when it suits everyone” messages.

Jigneshbhai had once told me and Swami many years back during one of our coffee conversations. “We should form our opinions and habits with care so that they don’t deform us.” More inputs from Jigneshbhai in the form of a document listing his own reunion experience came forth. Swami circulated it in the group to silence some of the vociferous arguments.

“Assemble one day in advance at a convenient place. Take a bus from there for two days on campus. Have an agenda but keep it flexible.” Most of us concluded that those were practical inputs.

“We must felicitate some professors,” someone said to which everyone agreed in gratitude.

“Have a day for sightseeing,” someone said. Another countered it. “It’s not the sleepy town it used to be anymore. Everything has changed there.” Sightseeing got knocked out, though some of us decided that visiting some of our favourite jaunts outside campus was a given.

“We must have food in the mess and live in the hostels,” an enthusiastic voice said. Another disappointing realisation drowned that out. “No one uses our messes and hostels anymore,” someone who had been to campus, of late, brought forth the reality.

The group got down to agreeing on a bunch of organising volunteers. The volunteers did surveys and exchanged opinions. Movement was slow and sporadic but steady. It happened between the Happy Birthday, Happy Diwali and Happy New Year wishes. Distractions often got “can everyone stick to the reunion?” rejoinders.

After much debate, the dates, duration, location, agenda and all and sundry were final.

A lot of mini reunions and smaller meetings happened in parallel by smaller groups living close to each other. After many years, some of us reconnected. The photos shared only increased the enthusiasm. By early 2020, discussions on hotels and travel began taking root.

But…all things big and beautiful need something greater than a coming together of hands and minds. Call it luck, call it providence or something else. That something, unfortunately, played truant in 2020.

Somewhere around April or May 2020, Swami called me and said, “The silver jubilee reunion is off. 2020 has been such a year. Can’t help it.”

Many of the alumni that had gathered over two years still stayed put though in the group.

“Dropping into Dallas next weekend. Anyone around to catch up?” type of messages started sprouting. Swami, like many others, received a lot of “Hey we have been in the same city but haven’t met” messages. Jigneshbhai smiled and said, “Not bad when you didn’t have an actual reunion.”

Jigneshbhai, after his college reunion last year, had told Swami, “At a college reunion, you meet a lot of old long-lost friends. But the person you meet the most is… yourself.” In some sense, a mini reunion did happen over the past couple of years, albeit digital. It may not be as good as a real one, but several notches better than none. For the real reunion, Swami is still waiting.