REUNION DAY - PART 1

19th December 2009.

About 20 of us were able to make it to the reunion, enough to create the magic that would roll us all back to our college times. It would be too much of an ask to have the entire 2005 pass out to reassemble on the day or is it?

I am not a nostalgic person, but understand what it means now. I could collect it frame by frame over the period of 2 hours. I also managed to have it captured in a video which should stand the test of time. The staffs including the HOD was rejoiced by the idea and set up the perfect treatment what we could have possibly asked. They were very helpful and made it an event to celebrate. You should have seen the faces and the voice decibels roaring. Its been some time since people started jumping around, some passive people at least had their heart rates jumping up a bit.

I nonchalantly humped up and down the speed arrest at the college entrance and parked my bike casually near the CANARA bank ATM which used to be the garage for the college buses once upon a time. I had a feeling of stealth for bypassing the security - at the gate . As I walked in towards the spiraling stairs the first thing I noticed are two blurry images, while my eyes were showing the real image, the brain was correcting them replacing 'em with images from the past. As I approached nearer, even that could not help either. Bala and Ramya were standing near the old college stage. Old Coffee day stall as some people might know it to be. Both appeared distinctly different from what they were, Bala appeared a bit jaded - seems she lost sleep the day before in lead to this event. Lakshmi Priya, Narmada were also in the mix with whom I've been in good contact with.

The next couple of people I meet are Thiagarajan, Prabu with Babuji by my side. Enquiring about others and glancing around I noticed the old college tree standing shadow to Alki, Raguvind, Lakshmanan and Devaraj. Handshakes all around. I've been in regular contact with Raguvind and Alki thanks GTalk but Devaraj, Lakshmanan and Prabu have been lost till that day. Asking whether they have met anybody at the department, the answer was NO. So I took it up to me and went to the department to find Mr Cyril in his usual busy self. He was on phone over an official matter, I made it known to him that I am about to pursue my masters and also slipped in the information that about 20 alumnis from 2005 have come to meet him. He looked puzzled but cheerfully asked the rest to come in.

When all of them walked in , he was more than just joyed. He was for a moment thrilled and over bound with joy. We greeted him with a bouquet and a flower vase as gift. He gladly took us all to the new Lab facility which used to be the electronics lab once upon a time. When we walked into the lab, we saw  hallucinated images of tables which were not there carrying breadboards and 8085 equipment. Dirty white coats amongst others buried in memories. He had a very light, lively chat with us in Tamil. The most fluent I've seen him in a very long time. He was sharing his alumni experiences and while we were discussing Jeyashree ma'am walked in with her usual swagger. Both our HOD and Jeyashree ma'am have not changed on bit. She anxiously walked in looking around at us and got stunned. Her expressions were priceless, when she held her mouth in awe at us.

Our HOD spent all the time that he could on his busy schedule while calls were coming in over and over. Reminding of our blackberrys at work. He was gracious on his part to invite us for lunch, but we had to politely refuse and invite him to our own lunch arrangement which was not yet planned by then. He soon left saying "The lab is all yours". Jeyashree ma'am was more than just eager to speak to each and everyone of us. By the time she was done, Dr. Cyril came back and said lets meet the Vice Chancellor. WOW. Sooner than later we finished our photo shoot with the VC. One pending item from the list was to get back into the old class our ours. That 800 sq ft of land seemed to have data more than 1000 TB. Spoken truly like a software engineer. LOL.