It seemed just yesterday…..
It was 28th December 2009 and I was standing near the Committee board room of St Thomas School which used to be the Principal’s office back in 1984 and the images came flashing back- last images of the school…. Bunch of students crowding the notice pasted on the wall in front of the Principal’s office with the results of our ICSE 1984 exams. It was the morning of 23rd May 1984, it seemed to float in front of my eyes the gleam in the eyes of some and also the lost feeling in the eyes of some. There I was… sitting on the staircase with a dazed look, thousands of thoughts crowding the small brain, quite unsure how the future would unfold…
…and now, here we were – 14 of us from a total of the remaining 34 of our batch gathered at the same place after 25 long years, each with their individual tales of their journeys through the maze that is life. Somebody was carrying out innovative researches in Texas, somebody was in the land of midnight sun and somebody was a financial wiz with a large Energy company and still somebody was writing his name in steel. There were also some who had stood fast in the original hometown holding aloft the flag of our batch and school. One thing that stood out was that almost everyone seemed to be doing well in their individual fields- proving that the foundation which was built 25 years back had stood in good stead!
The budding individuals had flowered and spread all over the world and they had all (or at least most of them had) converged today at the alma mater to recall their wonder years. We had two teachers from our times that could make it to the reunion- our Class Teacher Mr Rajan Varghese and Economics teacher Mrs Sarna completing the feeling of déjà vu.
Like zombies we spread across the school campus- trying to connect to the memories of the yesteryears- There was Class III B (which is now Class IB) , where I had joined this school-, I remember the Rev Father Mathew P Jospeh ( I hope I got his name right) and our class teacher- (the name seems to have been lost in time) introducing me to the class – there was Rajiv Thakur exclaiming- hey I know this guy- he is Ballu! it seemed that time had stood still. Remember the black large pipe in the corner? It is no more there but it seemed just there- Hey I thought I saw SV Sanjay and Jaggi there fighting as usual near the pipe! I tried to find out the shed where we used to park our bicycles, but no, in its place stood a new building which was still under construction. Fortunately the class 10 was still class 10- although the blackboard seemed to be on a different wall- hey was it that me sleeping in the first bench during the chemistry class in Class 10th? All the memories just seemed to tumbling out of the closet…
The silver jubilee turned out to be an emotional walk down the memory lane, for two days we seemed to have turned the clock 25 years back .Everybody seemed to have moved on but somehow were still connected to the foundation which was built in this corner of HEC, once upon a time….
