does it some times happen with you that more than one totally unplanned things happen around the same time all of them still related to one common thing?!
ok lemme explain...about 2-3 days back, i some how suddenly got this urge to watch "Rockford", the Nagesh Kuknoor movie. I have been wanting to watch it for quite some time, because it is about this kid in a residential school. A setting familiar to me, courtesy my own 7-year stint in a Sainik School. Finally now i decided to act, managed to get hold of the movie and watched it. The movie itself was just about OK, those were early days for Nagesh, so technically it was not all that great but you could still see these little heart warming moments that you often come to assocaite with his movies. And yes, I could relate to quite a few things in the movie and it was a nice little trip down memory lane.
About a couple of days later, i was driving some where on a lazy weekend and i get a call from this friend from my school with whom i have been in touch on and off. He tells me that there is a school old boys' meet happening in bangalore that same day and he has been co-ordinatng with some 7-8 other guys who will all be coming and asks me to come too. That was a pleasant surprise to me and I instinctively decided to go. 3-4 such meets happen every year and it has been 10 years since i left school. For various reasons and sometimes for no reason I had not been to a single meet till now!!!!
So i reached the venue of the meet, Officer's mess at DRDO township in Bangalore. I was the first of my batchmates to be there and started searching for familiar faces in the decent crowd that had gathered there. Cellphones anyway have made life easier these days, so i gave up on the search and called up my friend and he said they were still on the way. "Come on guys, we are from a Sainik School!! Punctuality is supposed to be ingrained in us from the time we were 10 yrs old, sometimes by well meaning teachers and at other by screaming, cane wielding army men!", I said to myself. Some more roaming around and I finally found a couple of faces i could recognise, one was a bathcmate and another a junior. And others started trcikling in. Thats when i really started to go back into the past. Majority of my batchmates who came there were from my house - Chalukya House! Sid was there (he is Major. Siddarth now), Kitty, Mallan, Anand then there were Tuffy, Chacha, Mahesh - one batch juniors from my house again!!
Ah it had been 10 years since i had seen any of these people. And these were the people who had a role in making me what I am today. I spent probably the most important 7 years of my life with these guys all the time - 24X7!! These people know some of the most embarassing things about you that u probably did as a 10 yr old kid!!! There was a function going on there, but we went out, and remembered some very fond memories of the good old days - about other friends, teachers, hostel superintendents and house masters, seniors and juniors, school routines, the old slang...man it was fun!!!
It indeed was an evening very well spent and took away some refreshed memories from there...and i couldnt stop smiling all the way on my drive back home...guess old memories tend to do that to you!!
cheers,
chandru
