Reminiscence of the Days of Yore

Shubho and I were part of Modern High School in the 1980s when Indira Gandhi became prime minister for the second time. I remember celebrating with him in the school cricket ground the day she was sworn in as the prime minister. We cheered for the alumnus of MHS in ways that nobody could imagine. We shouted slogans of "India is Indira and Indira is India" and stuck posters of the reassuring hand that later came to be known as the logo of the Congress (I).

Years later, Shubho and I met again. This time it was in Sydney. Shubho had come to meet his son who had migrated to Australia and found a new life in the city. I was visiting Sydney on holiday and of course to watch the Indian cricket team battle it out with the Aussies in the SCG over a cricket match, part of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. We sat over drinks and dinner at The Squires Landing with the backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge adding to the fancy photos in the most picturesque ways. We discussed cricket, family and Delhi. Of course, MHS wasn't missed and formed a greater part of our animated conversations. We examined our diaries to figure out the phone numbers of friends whom we had lost touch with over the years. Maybe someone in Sydney was close by. It could be Anita whose daughter was supposed to leave for Australia a decade ago to pursue her masters or Malti who always dreamt of settling down on the beautiful island. To our dismay, none of that seemed possible because we had lost touch with the majority of our friends from MHS. At about ten in the night, we bid goodbye to each other and promised to stay in touch.

Many years later Shubho and I bumped into each other on a subway near Battery Park in NYC. I was visiting NY to get my wife treated at an upscale hospital in Manhattan for a knee surgery and Shubho was visiting on an office trip. I often wondered what the man was up to. He was well past 60, a middle-class Bengali gentleman from Kolkata, whose father had run a newspaper in Delhi since the Indian Independence Movement that he carried forward as part of the legacy. Shubho had strands of grey hair on his head and his cheeks had turned saggy as part of ageing. He was unable to walk for too long, something that I had noticed the last time we met in Sydney. So we sat down at a restaurant in the vicinity of Battery Park on Wall St. without walking too much. As always we discussed MHS and this time, to my disbelief, Shubho wanted to meet in Delhi again. Shubho was known to be somewhat reluctant to meet in Delhi because he was a public figure in the city. Many people knew him as he ran a popular newspaper and would appear on television now and then. But he decided that it was time to plan for a reunion. We parked our plans for later in the year when I would hopefully be back in Delhi and he would also return after his work in NYC got over.

So it was Christmas time and the time to wind up the year's events. Shubho suddenly called. We both remembered that we had planned a reunion of sorts. We reached out to the school authorities to dig the MHS Old Students' Directory and found that it contained the email addresses and phone numbers of almost all students who passed out of the hallowed portals of MHS. We called our old prefects first with the hope that they would organize a committee of old folks who would do the calling and invitation. Like always Hema took the initiative and phoned everyone who was either famous or well-connected amongst the students. Luckily, from somewhere to somewhere, almost everyone from the batch of 1984 at MHS was invited. A few of us had passed away so we said a prayer and remembered them with sorrow as we sent out invitations over the phone. Rajlakshmi followed next. She organized the dinner menu and suggested that we meet at the school hall. The day was set. It was the 31st night and our school was going to be lit up for a massive event. It was the 40th anniversary of the 1984 batch and they would once again rejoice in the Panicker Memorial Hall with 2025 ringing in new hope and enthusiasm.

On the day of the event, I dressed in a white Van Heusen shirt with a Marks & Spencer trouser that I had bought from Harrod's in London. I reached the school gate at around 5 pm to find gleaming faces outside the school boundary. Shubho was inside the hall chatting away with our batchmates. Shubho and I exchanged greetings and then walked away to greet others. We took pictures of the large elephant statue that stood outside on the school lawns. Not to forget we folded our hands and offered our salutation to the national poet of India, Rabindranath Tagore whose statue still stands erect, carved out in bronze, at the entrance of the school building. We also visited the fighter plane that was donated by Air Chief Marshall SK Mehra who was a student of MHS and a few batches older. We took a full round of the school and explored the campus. The campus hadn't changed a lot. It was still a large and spacious campus. The new buildings had been constructed with utmost care and the school maintained that MHS was never going to be like a factory churning out ninety percenters like some of the other popular schools in the city. So the buildings had green wide spaces in between them. The cricket field was still at its original place. The grass was well mowed and the cricket pitch was covered with a clean waterproof cover made of PVC. The squash courts and tennis courts had been newly built and clearly, the school was not running short of funds in its plans of expansion. When asked what more we could add to the campus, I offered a piece of advice - that was to open satellite campuses without disturbing the clean and wide spaces in the heart of the city on Barakhamba Road. The school authorities seemed to have liked my advice.

At about 8 pm, we met again at the Panicker Memorial Hall. Shubho was missing this time. We heard from our friends that he had gone out to eat golgappas at the Bengal Sweets Corner at the Bengali Market. I remembered suddenly that he was very fond of Golgappas and we used to tease him about how he would approach the vendor asking for "Phuchka", the alternative name for Golgappas in Bengal. Being the Bengali guy that he was, he would also relish the sweet meat at Nathu's and the kheer or rice pudding at the Renaissance Sweet Shop.

We waited for everyone to join back the party. At about 8:30 pm when everyone was in the hall, the school authorities took over the presentation of medals and trophies to ex-MHS pupils to honour them. We realised that at least ten of us had been awarded medals of repute by the armed forces or the government of India. We clapped for them and then went to eat. What was astonishing was that even after 40 years of graduating from MHS, the school still used the same caterers for school events. Roshan Lal had a blooming catering business in the 80s. His father had started it in Daryaganj with a small sweet shop accompanying food catering orders for large events. To date, the food tasted the same. I later heard that his father was still alive and he had personally made it a point to oversee some of the cooking and the dishes were deliberately kept the same since the 80s.

It was almost 10 pm. The DJ had started to play music. We made sure that the music wasn't typical of the millennials or Gen-Z. We played a lot of Kishore and Rafi along with the evergreen Lata and Asha. Some of us danced to RD Burman tunes from the 70s and 80s. We played a screening of the Sholay in the hall and while no one was interested in watching the entire movie, we just rewound the reel to view a few most popular scenes. It was almost midnight when the party ended. We bid goodbye to each other. Shubho had a tear in his eye. He never imagined that he could return to his alma mater and celebrate with his friends from school in the way that he just did. I mean, he was whistling to Amitabh's scene with Dharmendra in the Sholay. As someone who was known to be a public figure and a sincere intellectual in the press, it was indeed a matter of surprise to all of us.

Sometimes the best things in life happen to us when we rarely crave them. Tonight was one such night. I had never thought Shubho and I would meet in remote corners of the world, away from our country and home, only to bring back memories from our school days. A lot of us have become big in life but the zest and enthusiasm to return to those days when most of us were carefree and growing to be responsible adults was immense. Such days are memorable and there we were, a bunch of hundred-odd old men reminiscing their old days and enjoying what was probably one of the most happening times in their long lives.

THIS IS PURELY A WORK OF FICTION AND MY FIRST SHORT STORY ON LINKEDIN. MHS IS SUPPOSEDLY A FICTIONAL SCHOOL LOCATED ON BARAKHAMBA ROAD AND BEARS NO RESEMBLANCE TO MODERN SCHOOL, BARAKHAMBA ROAD. AS SOME OF YOU MAY SEE, I NAMED THE HALL, PANICKER MEMORIAL HALL INSTEAD OF THE SHANKAR LAL HALL WHICH IS SITUATED AT MODERN AND ALSO PLANTED A STATUE OF AN ELEPHANT ON THE SCHOOL FRONT LAWN. SO, PLEASE EXCUSE ME. :)