RUBY REUNION

RUBY REUNION - 2014

Ruby Reunion – what an event in our lives!!  It has been so deeply etched on our minds that it  shall remain in our memory for ever. It has also added a few years to our lives. After forty long years we the batch mates met once again. The emotions and the nostalgia that was flowing cannot be described in words, one can only experience that. Everyone was so excited and forgetting the creaking joints were seen jumping around and hugging and meeting each other. It seemed that the forty years had not elapsed at all. It was a wonderful feeling for me and I am sure for all of us.

Today, a few months later, when I was seeing the Video recording of the whole event and also the still photographs posted on the ‘Drop box’ by the great photographer of our batch – Ajit Nagra, I cannot believe that we could organize such an event. This was possible only due to the great support of very very dear friends like Bobby, Ajit, Poonam, Mridula, Charlie, Taneja, Seekar and Deepak and of course encouraged by you all.

I was wondering where to begin, to describe our Ruby Reunion. I think I shall start from the very beginning when the ‘seed’ of our Batch Reunion was sown and this seed blossomed into this beautiful and sweet fruit that we named Ruby Reunion. It was  November 2013, at one of our monthly lunch meetings, Bobby came out with the idea of holding a Batch Reunion. Everyone present there immediately agreed and in my absence gave me the responsibility of organizing it. The decision was conveyed to me the next morning firmly with no scope for my refusal. I had to go with the wishes of my friends and in the right earnest immediately started working on it. At that point of time I had about thirty odd email IDs of batch mates. I sent a mail to them conveying the desire of our Lunch group of holding a Reunion of our batch in December 2014 as that would coincide with completion of forty years of our graduation from MAMC. Even in the wildest of my dreams, I had not imagined that the response would be so overwhelming. Emails started pouring in and everyone seemed to be excited about meeting the batch mates once again after forty long years. People started sending email IDs of friends to me and also started calling them and requesting them to join the band wagon  Here I am reminded of an Urdu Couplet – Ghar se akela chala tha, log judte gaye aur karvaan ban gaya. This is exactly what happened and the result was that finally more than seventy batch mates were at Manesar.

Noting that I was doing all the communications alone, Ajit Nagra, although sitting in USA and being a busy Anaesthetist voluntarily offered to help in making the lists of confirmed attendees and later literally nagging them to pay up. His approach was totally different from mine, but someone needed to be strict and blunt to organize such an event. I had even equated him to ‘Gabbar Singh’ of the famous movie of our times ‘Sholay’.

Resort hunting started and almost all Sundays of January and early February, five of us, Bobby, Charlie, Deepak, Seekar and I, would bundle up in one car and go to the various Resorts. To tell you all very frankly, although we would have liked to relax and  complete our long pending jobs at home, but we enjoyed doing this, as a matter of fact this was more relaxing and rejuvenating . We took these trips as Bachelor Picnics. After seeing many Resorts and discussing the pros & cons of each one, finally we zeroed down upon Best Western Resort Country Club, Manesar. After negotiating and getting a good ‘Package Rate’ we decided upon a figure to be collected from batch mates. Nagra took up the task of making the various lists of ‘Paid’, ‘On the Way’ and ‘Defaulters’. This was a Herculean  task. Among the first ones to pay was Seekar Sachdev. He is a born prankster – gave a cheque of amount ‘Rs. Babaji ka Thooloo.’. And that started the ball rolling and I realized what we all were heading for – total fun.

Now on, every Saturday Club meeting had only one agenda – Planning the Ruby Reunion.  Ideas and suggestions started pouring in – some laudable, some laughable, some naughty and some very prudent. All suggestions were noted and then discussed at the Core Group meetings held at residence of one of us. We got requests from some batch mates that they would like to speak for a few minutes to the gathering, some wanted to sing/dance. In one of the meetings Charlie came out with the brilliant idea of taking all batch mates round the campus and he named it ,Walk in the Clouds. I suggested that we should have a Fashion show. Poonam Sachdev immediately latched on the idea and took the responsibility of organizing it. A rough outline of the program for two days was chalked out. Buses were arranged to take us to the Resort and back. DJ &  Audio-visual facilities were finalised. On the other end Ajit Nagra was relentlessly working on the various lists and also trying to contact other batch mates and very important & crucial job of collecting photographs from us.  I shared a thought with Ajit, Bobby and others of making a Collage of all the photographs collected,  and also designing a Backdrop. Ajit suggested that a friend of  his can help in doing so. I designed the Backdrop and  his friend, Rakesh Kappor , executed  and gave the final shape to it. I was  shown a short film made by some  Alumni association by Bobby, who knew that I had something similar on my mind when I said that I wanted to make a Collage. That gave birth to the ‘TRIBUTE’ and ‘NOSTALGIA’ the two short movies.

  

One fine day Sudhir Khandelwal rang me and said that his wife Chitra & he would like to host a Pre Reunion Dinner. I was delighted with the idea and immediately sent an email to all regarding this and called it ‘THE CURTAIN RAISER’

18^th December 2014

 

Braving the severe cold wave of Delhi, we had a grand Dinner hosted by Sudhir & Chitra Khandelwal. It was a typical Alumnus party with lots of nostalgia in the air and many trying to recognize each other as they were meeting after 40 long years. Among the NRI friends were Vimal Sodhi, Pamela, Neel Kamal, Sujan Singh, Ajit Nagra, Raj Rani, Bikash Bose, Sunila & Sushil Mehrotra  Bobby & Charlie were not present and I was sure that they were upto something and surely they were seen entering with a ruby colored Banner with ‘Curtain Raiser’ written on that. The spirit started showing its effect on higher centres, inhibition was waning away. Girls (now grown up mature ladies) who were so shy during college days that they  would not say a word in front of boys, were meeting them with open arms and hugging them. I even overheard a couple of them confessing  about their crushes. If they had expressed their sentiments then,may be the number of intra class couples would have been much more(we already hold the record of’ ‘most intra class couple in history of MAMC). One could see flashes of cameras at regular intervals. Ajit Nagra had a field day and we all obliged by being his subject individually, as couples and in groups. Many of us took ‘Selfies’. Suddenly a Sikh gentleman entered and none of us were able to place him. He introduced himself as N.P.Singh our batch mate, but we were not convinced. On having a close look we recognized the person. He was Deepak Yadav wearing a pagdi.  Sudhir and Chitra had laid delicious dinner – original & genuine cuisines of ‘Dilli 6’. Reminded me of my childhood days as I have been brought up in the walled city. The Program for 20 ^th December at the college was announced by me. Then the  two days program of the Ruby reunion to the Best Western Resort was also outlined.  We all thanked the hosts and with promise to meet on 20^th at the college we all reluctantly bid good night.

 

 Friends I have created this Blog site so that we all can write about anecdotes that we remember of our college days and also post some photographs. I am not sure how others can post on this blog. You can just mail to me and I shall copy it on the blog.
Happy blogging.