Welcome, fellow time travelers. By sheer will power we've turned back the calendar to 1984. It was a difficult thing. We can’t quite re-create the Banyan tree, or the early morning assembly or the bun-samosas in Bengali market; but no matter. We’re here.
For those of you who don’t remember me, or never knew me, I was not the star athlete or the amazing guitarist; I was not a prefect or a topper; I was not thought of as particularly hip or particularly cool or most likely to succeed, or wittiest, or friendliest or anything else. [God knows I should have been voted best looking!] Like many of you, I was just a guy ― interested in, well, girls, and not much else. I was passing the time, waiting for the next thing. And yet, without noticing, something amazing happened. In those quiet years I formed what abide as the best friendships of my life. I know this is true for many of us and I think this is why we’re excited about coming back together and hanging out. [And also checking out who has gotten really fat or really bald].
An hour ago—trying to get in the mood to write this piece—I looked through our class roster. Some names had a snippet of visual memory attached to them—usually something completely irrelevant like Himanshu (may he rest in peace) dancing away on our class trip to Siliser, or Rahul Somani’s curly hair and gangly build; other names were so completely familiar and yet, frustratingly, there was no memory of a corresponding face—only the recollection of an incident. For example I vividly remember discussing the movie ‘Aas Paas’ with Pavan Chandra on a Monday morning. We had both seen it the weekend before and were cracking jokes about the pun on ‘aas’ [as in arse]. Mujhe hamesha aas ke paas rehna hai, he had said. I can totally hear his laugh. And yet I can’t see his face, only his black framed glasses. Other names have an emotion attached to them, but nothing else; these are the strangest. For Hukum Singh all I remember is him being a sturdy, dependable stand up kind of guy, and that’s all—no visual memory, and no memory of a specific incident. [I do notice that I have much less trouble recalling the girls. And, yes, I am thinking of you Mahip, and you Poonam, and you Vasundhara, and you Samina -- though you left before the ripening years]
Despite these ephemeral snippets of ordinary memories, I have this unshakeable notion that what happened in those fateful growing up years was inordinately important, even blessed. And it is. We, the Barakhamba class of 1984, are an authentic slice of history. And we are connected in this history: we are forever bound by a common time, a common place, and a shared set of experiences. I’ve often thought that it would be great to see a picture that somehow mapped out the trajectory of each of our lives, the turning points, the wins and the losses, the highs and the lows; a picture of the great stories and the awful mistakes and the few shreds of hard-won wisdom. Maybe this 25th reunion will begin to draw out that picture.
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