Bangalore Get Together

At last, we organised what is called a get together. GET TOGETHER. It means just a meeting of few old friends. And I am sure it happens once in a while in Bangalore, where most of my college mates are. But this particular get together was very much what I had been imagining from the time I had left college (This phrase 'left college' is a bit misleading as I am still enjoying college life). College here means CET, where I completed 4 years of engineering, the place where I lived away from home for the first time.

I had been trying to meet my classmates and fellow Brothersians, whenever I visited south India. In the past 3 years, I had been to Kerala for 5 times. Each time I visit south, the first thing that I do before leaving delhi is to inform in brothers2003 and teledreams2003 groups about my visit. Each time I hope we could pull of a meeting of some friends, to re-live those wonderful moments. Though I knew that getting a lot of people was difficult in a class 60, or say 120 including applieds, yet I had this feeling that at least some of them would respond to my call for the meeting. And to be frank I had been successful, in June 2005, when I was in bangalore for a week and was able to spend a night with some buddies. I met Keggis, Vasu, Arun P.S., Manoj, Kidi, and spent a night with Madhu Joseph, Ganesh, Ananthan, Saji and Micheal Tom. I am happy that we met and we remembered a lot of incidents from college, a lot of reminiscence, a lot of news about other batch mates (I was a little unconnected because I was in Delhi doing my post graduation and many people do not mail to the group. The yahoo group teledreams2003 had reduced to a forum for informing marriages only. No other incidents were reported on this.).
I also had a small get together at Kochi, in July 2005. That was with a few brothersians, Sathish, Jom and Aju. I had enjoyed a whole day with them, roaming around on Jom's new WagonR to the Cherai Beach, and a night's stay at Aju's residence.
But I was unhappy because I couldnt meet some of the friends because of communication gap. So this time again, I sent a mail to the group with my itinerary. I was visiting bangalore for 3 days. Unfortunately on weekdays. My chances of meeting people were low. Yet I floated this idea of a get together and to my delight, AD picked up job of organising it. He was my fellow brothersian and my class mate. So he was an ideal person for this job. He put a lot of effort, made phone calls and sent mails, formed consensus on the venue and time, and at last it was finalised that we shall meet in Forum, Kormangala, at 6.45 p.m.
I was a little busy as I had an appointment with an alumni of IIT Delhi at 6 o'clock. I hurried to that meeting, and asked Madhu Joseph to meet me at Mount Carmel College at 6.30. We met on time and proceeded through the heavy bangalore traffic in an auto-rickshaw to Forum. We were there at 7.00 p.m. and found a decent crowd. I didnt expect so many people. There was Keggis in a maroon kurta in his usual bossy manners, always smiling AD, Kooval specialist Ganesh, Gymman Saifu, Rajesh Kumar MR, Deepak J Nath and one representative from Applied, Madhu B (Madhu Joseph is also from applied and he came with me). After hand shakes and inquiries about what each one is upto, Deepak left the party as he had some other things to sort out for the day. Rogers Mathew arrived shortly from IISc. He was the only one in this group who was not my class mate. He is from Comp Sc. So his coming there made it a get together of brothersians also.
From there, we quickly moved to a restaurant named Aiwas, suggested by Joseph. It was a decent place and we had a nice time pulling each others' legs (Konai adi). I remembered the dinners that we had at Lords, near our college, where we used to go frequently during our final year. Kidi joined the party soon at the table and as usual he was the one to order the most. We called Vasu from the hotel and he agreed to join us soon (Though he dint reach even after the dinner). Joseph had to leave quickly as he was heading home by the 9.15 bus from Madivala. Our next destination was Corner House, an ice-cream parlor, to have our dessert. Each one of us paid for our dessert, except myself and Rogers. We being in academia got a treat from those who were employed. (Paavam padikkunna piller alle njangal) Vasu joined us at Corner House. Just then, AD informed me that Ratheesh PK was also supposed to come for the party. (Actually I had mailed Rat earlier and we had promised to meet this time. We culdnt meet in June) So I called up Rat and found that he was at Forum for a movie. All of us moved to meet Rat. He along with other Bethanians, Kiron and Sandeep were there. And that made it a get together of CompSci's too!
That was the largest get-together for me, with 15 people involved in it. THREE CHEERS to all those who came there to be a part of it on a working day and made it a success.