Au Chem 94-98 Get Together 2008.

While I was watching the LifeTime made for TV movie 'A Kiss at Midnight' with Seshu (my wife), I decided to post something on my blog. Yes, it is a great chick flick and I was giving her company doing my own thing. While the movie was going and Seshu was deeply engrossed in the trivial travails of romantic misgivings of a mother and daughter, I began to think about the get together with my friends from college the day before(12/26/2008).

I was hoping to mark the title of this blog '10 get together in 10 years', but the numbers did not add up. There were about 10 in 86 from our class who I thought (read hoped/wanted) would meet for the NE USA gathering. But only 5 made it to the eventual meeting. Rajashekhar agreed to be the gracious host in his new bought spacious home in Easton, PA. Aravind took care of the food. Sarat Chand drove in from Plainsboro, NJ alone as Sireesha could not make it due to her current situation. Raghu Ram drove in from NJ also where he is currently vacationing at this Brother-in-Laws place. I joined them from Scranton. Krishna Mohan got sick and Sai mailed that he couldn't come this time. Sai you took a rain check (You said in the mail'...Now I know that you are in PA and not very far away...will catch up with you later...').

Of the four classmates, I had met few previously and some I had spoken to over the phone. But it was the first time in 10 years meeting them for much of the evening. I was supposed to be the last one reaching Konda's home, but if not for 5 minutes I would have been the first. Time is a precious commodity once lost can never be recovered and I wanted to use this oppurtunity to catch up on lost time. As a side note on time, here is good speech on Time Management by Randy Pausch. It is long, but humorous and touching at the same time.

It was 6:30 when Aravind, the last among us came in. We all introduced each other to our families. Yes, I am getting old - I am talking about family in my discourse. When the families got settled down and got familiar with each other, we had our own chit chat session at the dining table.

The discussions ran helter-skelter on a gamut of topics from Roll 1(Chemical 1-Wahid) to 512(Petro Chem 12-Saran), Faculty(KVR, ARP etc.,), Hostel life, Seniors (Laxman Nyaya, Kameswari, SSS, Mouli, ChandraShekhar, Revanur etc), Juniors(Sampath, Madhavi etc.,), Other Branches at AU, Politics, Professional life as well as Personal. Politics ranged from Somalia to Belarus, Economics from Inflation in Zimbabwe where currency had expiration date to Outsourcing to Belarus where retention is higher than in India.

The discussion also ran into prosperity - the bigger the belt line the greater the prosperity. Sarat was to dishonor me with the distinction of being the least prosperous. Leaving aside the award for the prosperous person, my vote for consistency will go hands down to Aravind. I found him to be much like what I had pictured him 10 years ago. The rest four of us had some nature(read genetic) induced reductions and self induced additions to our morphological forms.

We discussed about what each of us was doing now and what/where we doing/were since 1998. We talked about careers, wealth made by some and lost by some. We also discussed about how some went places and some went nowhere in the conventional sense of material well being. We also talked about the bachelors in town and the first family(Sireesha Nallaapaneni among girls and Wahid among guys).

I surely had a great time and I hope others did too. The spouses looked like they had a fun time discussing what appeared to me was mostly about kids - kids are one common thread to a discreet set of people who were there because we were there.

Please find the link to the pictures from the get together here. If the link doesn't work try this in your browser http://tinyurl.com/7cm5c6.