6th grade to 8th grade back in focus

On 26th Jan, a few friends way back from primary school planned on getting together.

Meena Rao, Savitha, Myself ( the back benchers) Avinash, Prasad & a couple more front benchers. We tried calling more .. but somehow it ended up being just the five of us.

The plan was to meet at a coffee shop in 9th block Jayanagar (2/3 coffee, its called) around 11:30 am. Then, we'd walk over to Hemamalini teacher( one of the few awesome teachers we've been lucky to have in our lives), and invite her over to lunch.

Being Indians, we had to stick to the Indian Stretchable Time - and by the time we all got together and were knocking at her door, it was past 1 pm.

To be less dramatic - it wasn't so bad. Most of us were not too late, but the joy of seeing each other after such a long time, the girls wanting to pick up cakes/fruits/chocolates/flowers for our beloved teacher, all took time. And no - we didn't really get all that stuff - we came to our senses and picked up an assortment of fruits for her.

It was amazing to see Meena & Savitha homing in on the exact street her house was, and almost the exact house. We did ask her next door neighbour to find the exact house. But I won't be making jokes about 'girls and their sense of direction' for a while now.

Meeting Hemamalini teacher was awesome. Apart from the grey hair, she looked and talked just the same. Too bad she's stopped taking private classes - soon as I saw her, I wanted my son to go to her. :(

She didn't recall most of us initially - and towards the end some memories came back, we think. But it was amazing how great the feeling was despite that, just seeing her and hearing her voice. Yours truly - who used to get into fights with pretty much everybody - even once got into a fight with her son - about 5 years our senior. He seemed to recall it a little - and we had a good laugh about it.

She even took us upstairs to a little room she had on the top of the building, where she has a huge photo of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and spends a good part of her day in prayer/meditation.

It was with a good bit of reluctance that we left her house, but she'd already eaten her lunch. And some of us had little bunnies doing breakdance in our stomachs. We headed over to Jayanagar 3rd block -Pai Viceroy or something. The buffet was pretty good, and we each spent time talking about our life history, how we met our significant others, etc.

Going through Meena's autograph book was awesome. Looking at all our writing saying the same stupid things still felt great. 'If you meet a donkey, pull its tail. When it kicks you, remember me' was my line to Meena. Its a great wonder we all didn't turn out into Shakespeares & Wordsworths, I must say.

Then we came back to Sudarshan Vidya Mandir. Took pictures, reminisced some more about some funny incidents, half recited our school prayer ( basically we prayed everyday that Sudarshan Vidya Mandir bloom, and grow and stay immortal ) , etc.

I'd told some other friends visiting from the US that I'd be meeting them around 2-2:30 after a quick lunch with my school friends. But it was around 4:30 - 5pm when we finally said goodbye and headed home, wondering how the day passed so quickly.

What a day!

Here's hoping this leads to many more gatherings with many many more of our SVM contemporaries!