Reunion Blues - Part I

I thought a school reunion could be fun – if I actually recognised anyone after 41 years…

When the invite to the reunion arrived, my first reaction was panic. “Am I really that old? Am I sixty already?” A quick calculation followed. “No, only fifty-seven. Phew! Sixty is miles away.” I slipped back into denial.

That I didn’t trash the e-invite was down to one line: “Those of you who are blissfully happy with your lives can buy the rest of us a drink”.

“Still”, I thought, flinging it in the e-folder I tuck everything I don’t want to deal with, “Why trek back down to Yercaud? I’m a busy man. Who’d turn up, anyway? What would we have to say to each other after 41 years?” Worst of all, would I remember anybody?

The invite would have stayed there and the date slipped by, had it not been for another e- invite. A few former schoolmates living abroad were meeting up here in my hometown for a holiday. Would I join them? This was easier to commit to. And it was a litmus test.

I recognised one out of five and that was only because I was expecting to see him and he hadn’t changed much. The others I had to look at for a whole minute before familiar features began to emerge from now unfamiliar faces. Hair made a huge difference. One guy had gone tres bald, leaving the rest of us in awe. But as the evening advanced, it became clear that he, like us, was the same person he’d always been.

The 41-year gap evaporated. We laughed at memories that might otherwise have been lost forever. We had, we realised, shared so much (far beyond 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week for 7 years).

We had grown up together. How had we gone on to never see each other again? And not even give it a thought. Going home that night, I knew I would be going to the reunion.

A few of us met in a pub beforehand. The roars as we recognised each other had the regulars tut-tutting about not being able to hear the match. We didn’t care. Some bright spark had brought along copies of our last group photo. I looked at it and cringed. Was long hair really a fashion back then? God, how innocent I looked. How boring.

As more and more people arrived I realised how little I’d remembered. I kept cross referencing the men and women in front of me with the boys and girls in the photographs and asking “What’s your name again?”

Those I recalled easiest had been the funny ones. Some were “the image of themselves”, others had changed beyond recognition.

Roughly 23 out of 29 in my own class turned up, three of whom had returned from abroad for the event. The thing that struck me was how down-to-earth every one was. But then that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Ours was not a pretentious school – but it was good. It was run by a congregation of teaching brothers the Brothers of St. Gabriel, only 3 of which were present in school from back when we were their wards.

It had not produced blowy people who felt superior because of the school they attended. And yet there was a strong camaraderie between us.

As the days went by we caught up on each other’s lives. Many had had difficult times. Some had stayed single soon after leaving school. Others struggled with family problems. More had to deal with sickness and ill-health.

The majority had married and were busy raising families. Some had died. Something I believe in greatly was reinforced – people have such incredible strength.

A word I hadn’t used since school came rushing back to describe my former classmates – “sound”. That included those I’d never hung out with and might even have been a little afraid of. That night I realised that these had not been people to fear but to admire – unafraid as they were to let their personalities shine through in their haircuts and adaptation of uniform.

Which brings me to what people thought of me. In a word, reticent.

It was probably true. I had had one or two good friends. We had commonalties like being in the school band. And while we never stopped talking to each other, obviously we didn’t mix enough. One close friend had passed away and wasn’t at the reunion and I made up for all that non-mingling.

The last stragglers left a couple of days later. We hugged and swapped contact details. Someone joked that we should meet again in ten years when we’re heading for seventy. We were too shocked to laugh.

That was Sunday. A week later, I am back home sitting here writing my blogspot. I nearly cried when a gang of my newest buddies land and invite me out to dinner. It is a special moment. And to think that I had almost missed out on it completely.

Schoolboy Sportsmanship

On the morning side of the mountain....... come January 2010, my Alma Mater, is getting ready, possibly for the hugest reunion of baby boomers ever organized. And....on the twilight side of the hill....... not to be left out, within mirror-flashing distance (remember Rekha), the alumni ladies of similar bent (Sacred Heart Convent) are gung–hoing alongside.

And look at the programme line-up; it’s a stroll down memory lane as everyone becomes a tourist of his own youth. There’s even a cricket match in the offing where Alain Jason will seek once again to recapture his youth to see if he can still stand tall behind the wicket and remain hidden.

I first got involved in organized sports when I joined school at a tender age, when because of boarding school law I had to be a member of one of three houses. We played cricket, hockey and football and assorted blood-thirsty activities on those playing fields. Some, where one had to hit, catch, throw, or kick balls of different sizes. Most of us juniors could do none of those things.

Oh, there were the occasional exceptions like the fast-developing Iraqis with huge amounts of adolescent hormones, and thick moustaches sprouting from their bodies, who could throw a ball upwards of Mach 3 speeds , but with no idea whatsoever where it would go. When playing cricket these kind of guys always got to bowl, which presented a real problem for us kids. The wicket-keeper got to wear large gloves and protective ankle and knee pads, and the umpire got to hide behind the opposite wicket. But all we batters had was a cracked piece of wood that sometimes slipped out of our sweaty palms.

I hated to bat. I used to pray that it would start raining, or that there would be an earthquake to stop the game before my turn came. I became very close to God. But most often He would let me down and I would have to bat. The team captain would be yelling idiot advice in the background like, “Cover your wicket.”It was easy for him to say: he was out of harm’s way.

I on the other hand made no effort to cover the wicket. My only occupation was avoiding death. I would stand there holding my breath and when the prematurely large Iraqi let go of the ball, I would swing out blindly with the bat in the hopes of hitting the ball so that it would not smash into my body.

Usually I was clean bowled, which was good, because I could then go back to the safety of the pavilion, and encourage the team captain to send out another terrified kid to cover the wicket.

I much preferred fielding, especially in the 3^rd man position. If the batter got a hit and the ball got past the wicket keeper, all of the three slips and the gully, you could pretend to run like a maniac, so that by the time the ball landed you could be several feet away and safe.

Thus I learned about the adage of “Sportsmanship” which says: Never participate in anything that can do you bodily harm. Football and hockey were other great examples where players are urged to run into each other at high speeds and take the ball away from their opponent by kicking them or hitting them on their shins with a stick.

So instead I indulged in minor vandalism such as raiding the garden and sticking chewing gum on the head of the kid lining up in front of me at the refectory. But when I got to high school, I discovered that you had to be good at some sport in order to be called on stage during the annual awards and get a silver cup or medal with your name engraved on it.

Everyone in school attached a lot of importance to those silver cups and medals. You could be an imbecile of astonishing magnitude, but if you had a silver cup or a medal, you were bound to succeed in life.

Oh, the school administration made it sound as if academic achievements were important too. They’d have Annual Days, where they’d call the studious kids up on stage and present them with more books on philosophy and national history. But the kid who walked up with the logarithm tables dangling from his belt to receive his math achievement award did not impress the rest. No, to make in my school you had to get a silver cup or a medal, which meant you had to go out for a sport.

So I went in for the long jump, because all it took was having to run about 30 feet and land in a bed of soft sand.

I spent a happy 6 months, leaping into soft sand and dreaming of my silver cup. Then one day there was the school sports and I entered my name. That proved to be my downfall, because it turns out that they measure how far you jump and only the three longest jumpers get points. I was not one of the three. I was not one of the ten. In fact they could have pulled lame patients out of a hospital, and they would have probably jumped farther than I did.

So that was the end of my involvement with sports. Fortunately, there were other avenues to being popular in school, which involved jumping over the wall to go to the nearest dhaba to eat dosas, getting caught, and caned at morning assembly in full view of hundreds of admiring boys. Thus achieving social acceptance.

After high school, I discovered that silver cups and medals become less important than academics. Think about it, if you attend a corporate cocktail dinner junket and subtly try to flash your silver cup, people will think you’re a moron; whereas if you subtly try to flash your Cornell credentials, people will still think you’re a moron, but an educated one.

I often wonder what I would do if I had a silver cup. Maybe use it for drinking beer.