Man From Matunga

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December 26, 2005

80 batch reunion

This piece appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror.

One of the benefits of contributing to “Writer’s Bloc” is of suddenly being contactable publicly. A few weeks ago, Mohun, an old school-mate, emailed me and we touched base after almost a decade. A couple of non-committed Sundays later, he just dropped in home and along with Krishnan, who lives nearby in the same “gulli”, we gup-shupped through the morning.

Earlier this year, I went to Ashdin’s wedding, probably the last of my school friends to get married, where I ran into Cedric, who I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. Cedric now lives in Bangkok and eventually later this year, we actually landed up visiting him and having a great time.

Last week, Cedric was in town and Mohun was dying to meet up with some of the others of our Don Bosco batch of 80, who meet up every once in a while. With a minimum of fuss, around 15 of us met up last week.

Irrespective of where we initially decide to meet, eventually, we always land up at just one place, Rasna Punjab. Rasna has been around for donkeys years and serves better-than-average Punjabi food with reasonably cheap booze. Though highly under-rated compared to the other restaurants in Matunga, it gives us a lot of rope and accommodates the din we create, with all our cussing and shouting, fending off with ease, complaints from the nearby tables.

A meeting of school-friends is almost always about nostalgia. Remembering all the crazy and wild things that we had all done during school, catching up on what everyone is doing now and remembering and bitching about those who aren’t around. The school, the Matunga environs and the people concerned…all evoke extremely strong memories and sometimes, strong emotions as well, along with some baggage that you’d have thought would have been off-loaded a long time back over the last twenty-five years.

One such baggage that we have all offloaded is of being SSC students. I still remember how ICSE kids used to have this la-di-la, superior attitude even in those days, which apparently has gotten even worse. Now, looking back, I think that was actually a good thing; the hunger to “show them”, combined with the rounded-education from a top ten school, I am sure, played no small part in driving us to where we are today.

The sad part though is that, this year marks 25 years since we left school and we forgot to celebrate this anniversary. Forgot…just like that! We’ve decided to do one now, but Mehul is so pessimistic, he thinks that not more than 50 people (25 couples) will turn up for a reunion. I am overly optimistic, and am sure that at least 125 ex-students will turn up (wives extra), my argument being that even if you didn’t like the school or your friends, you would come to a reunion at least once in 10-15 years. At least out of curiosity, if nothing else, to see how everyone else was doing, how the teachers were and whether Matunga and the school environs had changed or not changed or whatever. We finally laid a bet and come Dec 16, 2006, we’ll know who wins. And I know that Mehul wouldn’t really like to win this bet.

Posted by bhavinj at December 26, 2005 05:47 PM

Comments

Posted by: manfromborivali at April 17, 2006 06:52 PM

Posted by: Bhavin at May 7, 2006 06:14 PM

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