The Missed Reunion

           It's the year end and there are nostalgic trips galore of the days gone by. The dailies look back at the year's 'moving' and 'shaking' events and the FB  is flooded with updates on small reunions, big reunions, silver jubilee reunions, close friends reunions, long lost neighbour reunions, window -to - window- unrequited- romance reunions( now with brats, fats and wider statistics), school reunions, chaddy buddy reunions...

       And here I am looking at all those updates and uploads wistfully. Yes, I missed one of those. I missed our school batch's  25th year of passing out. Why I missed it is a different sob story altogether. So miles away I was sitting and visualising the squeals and the guffaws, waiting for the updates to stream in, resigned to my fate in a typically Nirupa Roy fashion. 

     But trust your friends to prick that  wallowing-in-self-pity-balloon. Just when I was going from Nirupa Roy to Meena Kumari, there's a call from a friend ( last seen more than two decades back)  who was making all efforts to  come and meet me in Delhi prior to the reunion. And how we talked is unbelievable considering we barely spoke, by her own admission, in school! Then another one calls up having travelled from UK  for the event as did a couple more. He was making calls to all of us who  couldn't make it to Samitra. 

   Each time the mobile pinged, I pulled my kids closer to point at the snaps uploaded and took great pains to explain each of those smiling faces, the back ground and the anecdotes. I think, I overdid it. Every ping after this, the kids were seen scuttling off to other rooms and even to the balcony in the morbid cold weather. The better half of course made the appropriate sounds at the right intervals thereby absolving himself of all crimes. And all was peaceful in the home front. 

   Like a sentimental fool, the eyes went misty looking at those now grown ups barely managing to fit into the benches; the deer still doing the rounds near the class rooms; the bus stop; the tamarind trees; PT sir (  fresh from a course Down Under) who was hell bent on getting us to like the morning drills with music; the English teacher under whose look we would still squirm enough to mind our p's and q' s... How nothing had changed, only the years had added on physically!

    I don't know if it was true in the rest of the country but growing up in conservative Madras in the 80s, we behaved quite strangely with the opposite sex... treating them like untouchables. That lasted till junior school. Then we moved on to middle school and discovered they were not so bad after all. This was till the Reproductive System lesson came up in eighth standard, if I am not mistaken. All of us sat still with sheepish looks on our face, giggling nervously and trying hard to behave normally. The biology teacher walks into the class in a stiffly starched cotton sari looking sterner than usual. The lesson proceeds without any mishaps and as the details are delved into we dig our nose deeper into the pages going redder in a desperate bid to muffle the giggles. And then the cheekiest of the lot raises his hand! Good Lord! He has a doubt! And he is going to ask! We were astounded! I don't remember his 'innocent' doubt but I do remember the ice cold response.
"One more smart question from you, young man, and I'll have you right here in front of the entire class for a demo of all the parts involved..."  Needless to say, that had all of us behaving till the lesson ended.

   Twentyfive years later, the anecdotes are gems that each of us treasure. When friends sit together one recollection often triggers another and very soon all of us are rolling mirthfully. Strangely, it makes all those barriers of distance and years disappear.  So it did for me as the smiling faces looked back from the monitor. Tagging some of us ( couldn't - make - it lot), certainly had us inclusive to the reunion party.