The Sundays aren’t really that good these days. You have the kid’s issues to settle. Then she wants you to vaccuum the books that you keep buying with the hope that you would get to read them some day. And instead of reading them, you end up ruining your holidays by cursing your ill-found aspirations! And one Sunday in a year you curse more because you have the reunion to go to. Or was it my eagerness to reach Jamuna Bhavan that made everything else so redundant!
Perhaps. But the point is I did everything required of a good husband, good father and a good son. So everybody was happy. The next clever thing I did was to ring up Surojitda and ganged up with him for the 25 km drive from home to Jamuna Bhavan — the venue for the reunion.
September 14, 2008, would go down the history of the association for many firsts. Let us start with the first first. In 1965, Hiren Sinharay stood first in HS from our school. He was the first first. Till the 12th of this month he was just a statistics that I had promised my elders I would get in touch with.
Gopeswar da was after me. “Find him.” My entire journalistic skill was on the verge of being questioned. So I said,”Enough. If this guy is someone that everyone is claiming to be, the net would throw something up about him.” But the search drew a blank. Little did I realise that it was my lack of application. I was not spelling his name right!
It was August. I was talking to my kid sister in Germany. She is a big time potential and an engineer manager. We were on skype. I asked her whether she had heard about someone called Hiren Singha Roy in the banking cirle. She asked me to look him up in Linkedin. I said,”Hey, he ought to be there, if he is what the others are claiming him to be.” And he was there. Hiren Sinharay! Ooops! So I wrote a mail to the effect that “if you are the one, please get back.” Every single minute from then on was straight out of the pages of a suspense thriller.
And then the blackberry groaned. The inbox had a star. Hussh! Here he was. Hiren babu. Within 3 days he was Hirenda. He was coming to Cal on 7th. Yeeeeeeeees. 14th our reunion. Sadly, sadly he would be leaving on the 14th. Can we meet? Oh, please can we meet? Yes. Shall we decide on the date later?
I heard his voice about 9th. Untinted by any strain of living away from home for such a long time, his clear crisp yet affectionately firm tone took me by surprise. And then a few days later we met him at a city club. Handsome by any definintion. Straight and emotional. And still very much an alumnus of the school.
I will leave Hirenda here and get back to the second ‘first’. Our original intention of felicitating our teachers, who made us what we are today, could at long last be implemented. We started with Ramadi and Kesto babu. Ramadi came with her grandson who clicked away as a member of the audience while his grandma sat on the dais absorbing an emotionally surcharged environment.
When Indranil gave her the mike, she just could not speak. And us? We did have a big catch in our throats. Kestobabu could not come. Jogajibanda went to his place the next day and gave him the mementoes. Folks, we will have to wait for the pictures from Jogajibanda.
We have also enlarged the spectrum of prizes to felicitate the students who have done well in the HS and madhyamik. And at long last we have been able to progress towards funding the cost of study of a few deserving students of our school. The modalities are being worked out by a committee consisting of ex-teachers and executive committee members who in their professional life are also teachers. They would first draw up the norm for selection. Their recommendation in this regard would be binding on us. Unless ofcourse the executive committee in conjunction with the empowered committee wish to elaborate or improve on the body of recos.
Well as the curtain came down on the formal programme and the entire group dispersed to the lawn for the revelry, Narayan da came over. He wanted to have his friend Hiren’s address and contact nos. So I rang up Hirenda and caught him on his way back home from the airport in London! Well, folks, reunion is about emotions and there was no dearth of it at Jamuna Bhavan. But then I have no way of showing you the pictures, as I had, like I said, left home in a hurry and the price was the forgotten camera!
Suparna Pathak
