Preparing for a reunion, of sorts

Reunion: an act of reuniting, a meeting of persons after separation
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

As I prepare for a reunion, I realize that reunions don’t come naturally to us. In fact, I contend that if somebody takes the time to research, they will find reunions to be a western, an Anglo-Saxon concept; events that took place under cloudy skys at Eton, at St. Andrews in the old country, meant only for the elite who afforded their adolescence to these hallowed places.

When thinking about reunions, one can see English men with their bad teeth, and tight collars around their wrinkled necks, shaking glasses of melting ice cubes in yellow, charcoal smelling potions as they talk up their conquests since leaving the damp confines of their centuries old institutions. Balding barristers in deep conversation with obese bankers who in turn watch the one who joined the Royal Navy, with envy, as he got “weathered,” conveniently skipping the ageing process that is taking its toll on them.

My public school educated brother, I am sure, will tell me that those Indians who made it to imitations of their English idols have copied reunions with élan.

But, such is not my fortune. So, as I prepare for a reunion of sorts on Halloween Day, in a remote town in India, I am excited, apprehensively though. I prepare not only in ensuring that the tummy is tucked, but in other ways as well. An excuse to acquire another pair of shoes, an eye towards the wardrobe, a reminder to have a haircut before leaving so as to hide the gray, are only a few things on the preparation list.

We are a modest group though. More R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days, than Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays. This Uttar Pradesh version of Malgudi, presents no threat to our Anglophile cousins of reunion flair. For one, the tree that leaned on a river branched off and its fruits fell in the lazy current of pre-liberalized India sowing its seeds away, in distant places. Changing school administrations, and a sense of history and posterity having eluded everybody, there does not exist an alumni initiative.

But, the roots of the tree were strong and firm that as I look to meet these people who were once my contemporaries, there is anticipation of warmth and curiosity, leaving aside envy and competition known amongst peers of fabled reunions.

The occasion for this silver jubilee reunion in the Malgudi off of the Ganges is a friend’s wedding, an outlier who in a Shakespearian sort of way waited for all to grow-up, for internet to become pervasive to enable contact and only then he went and found a woman fit to be his bride—all to construct a reunion? It seems that way anyways.

So, a month from now many of us will set sail and converge on that single lane road that leaves from Varanasi to the Malgudi in the Vindhyas. People will arrive by plane, by car and by overnight train. Bookings were made months ahead, calendars synced and suggestions of what all will be done put out there oblivious of time limitations.

Once there, hills will be climbed. Songs sung. Stars gazed at on clear pre-winter nights. Our homes of past visited. Booze consumed albeit even today with guilt, considering the surroundings once were restrictive and today seem chaste from afar.

Each of us brings his own plan, his own to-do in today’s speak. Mine is to walk barefoot on the soil that I stumbled on when I took my first step and many thereafter. Another one is to visit the hill-top school with its characteristic red soil playing field which promises to spike goose-bumps as we will see younger ones, and in them us of years ago.

Stories will stir souvenirs d’enfance from memory cells long considered dead in the marathon of time, contradictory versions of events vigorously debated, certain teachers imitated, and yes boys [read: grown men] will find time to huddle and talk about that one everlasting and immortal of all topics—girls.

As physical and emotional stones are turned and terrain once familiar traveled, this reunion will have one thing in common with its English counterpart, and that is that this reunion shall also have an ending. We will conclude the festivities and make it back on the trail that will put us on the path to reunite with those who we now belong with and for. And with that this reunion shall become a thing of the past, a memory of memories.