Reunions.

class-reunion-cartoon-4

Ranjan suddenly announced last night that instead of his usual Saturday night trysts, he was off to a different locale to attend a reunion with some colleagues from a company that no longer exists but where all of them worked together fifteen years ago!

One of my old colleagues from my Bengaluru days is coming to Mumbai in April and has been trying to organise a reunion of old colleagues currently resident in Mumbai and Pune while he visits.

My daughter in law went for a girls night out with her colleagues from a company where she worked ten years ago.

I have been attending many reunions with my classmates when one or more of come to Pune and those here organise a lunch or dinner and invite the locals. Besides that, when I was in Delhi, one of my classmates there organised a lunch with Delhi classmates to meet up with me. We also regularly meet once a year at some resort or the other to which I have not gone except for one last year which was close by at Lonavala.

The point is that everyone seems to be attending reunions of all sorts all over the place thanks to the very important tool the internet being available now. Long lost friends are catching up with each other, and family and other associations are getting revived through such reunions.  I for one am glad to have been able to reestablish contacts with some old classmates and colleagues through such reunions.  How about you?

Knowledge.

A very old colleague from the mid seventies called me up last night to just say hello and to express his joy in finding me again. It so happened that in the course of his normal business, he met another friend who is in regular touch with me and they got to talking about my old employer and that is how my name cropped up.

I was delighted to talk to him and he has promised to keep in touch. It would be very nice if he does.

Our mutual friend subsequently rang me up to ask me what I felt about the conversation and I said that it was nice to be remembered and that I was grateful to him for making the reconnect possible.

He however floored me with his next question. “Now that you are so much older and have got so much more experience, would you still do those unorthodox things that you did in the seventies?”

I had to think a bit and said, that the answer to that would be an unqualified yes. I qualified that by stating that I continue to do unorthodox things and so it would imply that I haven’t really changed.

I however suspect that what my friend wanted to know was whether with different knowledge that I have gained over all these years, I would do the same things given the same circumstances. Now that is a different ball game altogether and I really have no answer to that. I however do believe that this cartoon strip is priceless in explaining that.