Alumni Meet? Go! : Blog # 259

Alumni Meet? Go!

I read somewhere that every generation thinks they are smarter than the previous one. And the very same generation thinks they are wiser than the next one. There are very few places where this plays out with utmost affection than at an alumni meet without losing even as much as an ounce of fondness for each other.

Those of you who would have revisited your childhood home at a time when your bygone childhood feels too distant, would know how exactly going back to one's alma mater feels like. There is an abundance of fondness and gratitude towards that place for the sweetest of memories that it has gifted you. There is a sense of familiarity with the people and the environment around which makes one wonder how oneself has changed in many ways and how we all are still the same in as many ways.

An alumni meet somehow plays out to be a windshield and a rear view mirror all at once. Seniors from earlier batches with the wisdom that life has given them shows us what lies ahead. Their success inspires us to aspire beyond boundaries set by one’s own juvenile mind and their failures reassure it is OK to try and fail .It tells us that the beauty of life is in its resilience. The juniors remind one so much of one's recent past. At times, it reminds one how exactly similar oneself was or rarely, how completely different the current set of people are.

The ones who are luckiest are the present batch. They are blissfully clueless about being in the best time of their life. And rightfully so. Else nostalgia will lose all its romantic aura, isn't it? Their big worries which you have been through and have realized over time, aren't really big enough to fret about. How the mysterious ways of life don't let them see how little the worries in fact are; may be so that they can laugh about those little worries later on.

The most surprising will be one’s own batch mates. Many make you wonder how some people doesn't change at all and you are glad that they didn't and then there are others who makes you think that even change doesn't affect them ;).Then there are others who evolve beautifully which reminds you of that saying by Buckminster Fuller, " There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly".

The dear professors, whom you look up to and with affection that grows with time, just the way it is with parents. One realizes how kind they were to put up with one’s childishness. How they also played along, not because they didn't know any better but just to humor and indulge our young minds dying to be seen, heard and touched.

If you are lucky, the college won't have changed much after you left. There will still be corners where you can see an earlier self of you walking from. There will still be a courtyard that used to resonate with your laughter. There will still be a canteen and a lawn where you had the best of times with your friends .The class rooms which made you think, act, laugh, learn, sleep (at times ;)) and grow. The sights that we have seen, the sounds we have heard, the people we have met, the memories we have made are what makes the place so special. To know that there are more such people who share these experiences with you across very many years makes them all the more special.

One can't stop wondering how humbling and cathartic an experience it is to just be in a place which has helped you grow and evolve. How beautiful and selfless the relations formed there are. How the jokes which had us in splits continues to be so across years. How certain things always remain the same and how certain others always undergo change. How some of the juniors have grown and how your seniors say you have too.

All that it leaves you with is the people whom you met, the stories that they told, the laughs you shared and the longing to get back to the reassuring familiarity with eternal fondness.

More blogs on Amrita School of Business, My Alma Mater ~ The Gate pass ~ For those in the know ;) ~ http://praisesnbrickbats.blogspot.in/2012/04/pink-slip.html 

Arun Babu

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