I have studied my intermediate (Plus 2) at Jawahar Bharati College, Kavali during 1976-78. This was the first time I had to stay away from my home, in a hostel. In my life it was a curious period of living in a hostel, making your own bed, washing my own cloths etc.
Coming from a land holding and political family, had certain advantage in terms of allotment of a large room (bigger than what others had) an ever obliging roommate etc. However, it seems I was seen as a rich boy and people had generally kept away from me (a fact which I got to know when I was interacting with people for the reunion)
I was in touch with about 7 people from that period and had their phone numbers. Just formed a group with those numbers in WhatsApp and started interacting. Slowly people started telling where others are living etc. It was a slow process and getting the numbers was not that easy, it is almost like, people were holding them close to their chest. Most of the people were still on good old feature phones and didn't use WhatsApp, we had to communicate through SMS with those people.
Slowly the list of contacts started growing and local level interactions started happening. We had frequent get togethers at Nellore, Hyderabad etc, in small groups. It was catching up time and very interesting learning experience.
It was really heart warming when you get to know, most of your friends had passed various Public service exams and got them selves some good posts and some have chosen to enter the teaching profession etc. More heartwarming was the fact their children are now well educated and settled down in India or abroad.
Luckily some guys came up with the group pictures and to make life easier, I tried to number the people in the picture, which helped in identifying the person. With these pictures, first exercise was to name them and after that set the ball rolling for the search. Though people had few contact numbers, they were not shared earlier, probably for sheer lethargy, this delayed the process of getting to trace few more. As we had set the date long before, coinciding with a batch mate's visit to India, we were working feverishly to get more people on board. Luckily the tempo picked up in the month of September and October. Thanks to WhatsApp profile pictures, we were able to see their latest pictures, how they look today and compare from the group photo how they looked then.
We originally thought of having the meet at Nellore, the district head quarters and visit Kavali, but for logistics reason we decided to move it to Kavali itself. However the challenge was to find a place where we could have the reunion. One of our batch mates, offered his home for the meet, after looking at the option for suitability, we had to move it to a place where a larger number could be accommodated. A strong feeling there will not be more than 30 for the meet was in the mind of most of the people.
However, as we entered the month of October, the tempo started picking up rapidly, more and more effort was being put and more people were being located. Happily the new reconnects were more than happy to be part of the reunion. Those who confirmed for sure they will not make it, had a change of mind.
Few people made the extra effort to locate the batch mates, ideas started flowing as to what we should do after the meet etc. As we approached the 25th, had very strong indications the crowd is going to be more than 50. out of about 135 from the science groups, with 10 not living anymore, we were able to gather about 80 numbers and hope had increased for a better participation.
Couple of visits were made to Kavali from Nellore by our chief co ordinator and things were put in place. I decided to visit the place myself on the 30th, a day before the event. As I was talking to the hotel people on the likely number, our sponsor could not believe the numbers being touted by me could be true.
A program was made out, time was given from 8 AM starting with Breakfast, it looks like our Indian mindset will not allow people to believe others will be on time. While we landed up in two cars from Nellore by 8.15 AM, locals were confident it will not start on time. Our own daredevil of the yester years lived up to her reputation by driving down alone from Tirupati all by herself. Breakfast that was to end at 9.30 AM, went on till 10.30 AM and we finally managed to start the program.
We provided two bigger size pictures of the group photos of the 1976-78 times, so that people can look at each other and see how much change had taken place. Numbers had surged and some surprise participants, who got to know about the program just the previous day having turned up. As we started we had about 50 people as the program got about few more joined.
We paid homage to those who are no longer with us and then asked the people to tell us their life progress since we parted ways. As one by one took their turn talking about themselves and their families, few made us laugh, Few got us tired with long speeches, few made us feel sad and few got us excited with their success and there was time for few apologies too for the behaviour in those days. Probably it is the story in every reunion as life takes its own turns (Clicktotweet). During this part, It was time for felicitation to few of us for forming the WhatsApp group and getting the reunion to happen. We took some group pictures at the venue.
We broke for lunch at about 1.30 PM and and reassembled by 2.30, in the meanwhile few more joined. Best thing was one of the participant joined us with her Husband (on our request, driving down all the way from Hyderabad after a midnight celebrations the previous day) and that the day happened to be their 31st wedding anniversary.
Post lunch we felicitated two teachers (who were able to make it) who were part of our learning days and then celebrated the anniversary by asking the couple to exchange the garlands and cut an anniversary cake. We distributed the mementos for each and every participant to remember the participation.
Then we headed to the college, interestingly college had an another program on that day and they had the Dy Speaker and a MP who is a old student of the college present for that event. We were able to catch up with them. One more round of group pictures and we started roaming about in the college. For us hostelries it was sad to see the hostel in such condition. We were served some tea and snacks by one of our batch mates on the campus. We had few more joining us at the college taking the total number to 60 participants.
Later in the evening we started assembling at the house of one of the batch mates, sans those who had to leave for various reasons. It was once again time for some fun and regale. He arranged some planting of trees in his compound and he also handed over one plant (picked up from the college campus) in a new pot to take it home as a memory. Those who chose to have few drinks were treated to it by our NRI batch mate who brought some Single Malt for this occasion. After a good meal, people started saying bye to each other with a hope for an early next meet.
While we had intentions to discuss the future for this set of Alumni of the college, we could not make much headway since the program was tight and got delayed due to the late start.
Everyone was happy to see 60 of their old friends again and catch up with the good old days. Learning's are how to handle egos, understanding expectations, getting people to handle things, managing the show without any contributions and only with sponsorship.
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