06082011
The event is not the first of its kind… the participants are not strangers to each other… none has a competitor… no rich opening and closing ceremonies to mark the event…but yes there is a story to narrate – a story which cannot have an happy ending so easily.
And for this event to be a success like any other event it passed through all the params of the life cycle accounting at each and every stage.
On a routine office day, the #1 korean s/w organisations 106.107.86.11 couldn’t block a mail from satti and the pop up on the right bottom of my 20” LCD attracts my attention. The mail is neither a group mail nor a 1-1. This marked the beginning of the story….
Mail exchanges, ideas, new proposals, discussions, counter arguments, misunderstandings, expressing angst, personal meetings with high tea breaks… everything possible saw its entry in electronic form, and the togetherness was firm in all our minds and so undisturbed.
The first personal meeting, a much needed one took place at an apt venue. At this venue we have a view of affluent and poor swimming pools with a wall separation. Just like how a rich kid was enjoying in a blue floored pool and the poor in a cemented water tank… the kids are unaware of the state they are… just they only know the enjoyment in water… matching our thought of meeting all the friends only to share with them, get the feel of being with them and not to gauze anything else. This venue brought out the major roles and responsibilities on paper and the decisions made were supported by all ‘to be organizers’ and selected a unanimous communicator to the external world and rest all should happen behind the screens.
Next day the larry page’s mail server was about to witness the clear planning mail, communicating to all the friends present in India. But this went for a toss… the first hurdle, a big blocker…contradictory but welcome mails were exchanged with other choices of venue. After some hiccups and understanding many aspects, the silicon city was chosen as the venue. Rudraram anni has to pitch in and control lot of things with sheer swift adding needed ingredients many a time to the mails in replies throughout the journey.
After some more mail exchanges all the friends are brought back to the same page though on different paragraphs. Story was on track…
On a sunny drizzling usual Bangalore Saturday an azure grey vehicle carries satti, gani and ranjit on the 80kmph speed limit road to pick our choice of the resort. Anil drove it to all the nearby resorts to airport. On each resort visit one of us narrated to a guy in tie and suits our purpose, the celebrations and negotiating for the facilities to provide etc etc…After all the discussions and the roaming club cabana was the resort almost finalised in our minds though final confirmations took some time. We planned for alternate options for night dinner and talked to other restaurants on the way back making sure we miss nothing related to food arrangements on the event day. Azure grey vehicle drops us and silently walks back to her home.
After resort finalization it was more online and over the air meetings than personal. As per the distributed R&R each jump started on their respective tasks and kept on updating and gathering suggestions by any easiest means. Some even preferred keeping silent as a choice. J
The crucial task of finance ministry came to the hands of ranjit and he started collecting funds giving some early bird offers. T-Shirts and small memento customizations was the responsbinilty of ganesh and he went to the extent of pulling tollywood movie director in to picture to order these. Everyone’s support was immense in increasing the list of attendees. Deepkanth’s car pooling kinda arrangements and adjustments ensured reserved seats to all the passengers to the resort. I felt there’s a difference in the way the event is being organized compared to college days. There is a pinch of professionalism added acting as the major ingredient.
Every day good number of mails was exchanged with lot of suggestions, enhancements, and contradictions and showing angst on each other and finally the ombudsmen being anil.
The d-day came:
“transistor is nothing but varying resistance from input to output” fame Muniratnam sir, “ever cool” Suneel and “I am present sir” fame venkateshwarlu getting down from running train arrived at ranjit’s flat and we all alighted “Engineering Drawing’s N.D.Bhat Jr”madhukar eee’s car heading to the resort. /* this eee became more of a surname J*/.
ECE CR, KVR, Ravindranath gave a chance to be picked by 97406 not letting him a chance to switch on the radio FM. “malleeshwari movie hero” Madhusudhan’s was the more request stops car picking up “die hard cricket fan” Sudhir(popat), “wealthiest” Shravan seth, “left arm lover boy” Ravi(china) and Gopal reddy in his let’s go car. Karunaker smartly went to BIAL earlier than pune’s spice jet to scan the kingfisher colouring standing at indigo’s counter. The tallest of CSE picked up “who is the tallest of ECE?” – Hari Prasad and sudheer peddapalli. “the 52 card game king, queen and jack” deepkanth started first in his ford chariot picking up “the leader” satish chandra and “kitss ever young master” amma satish /* amma became more of a first name*/ and “swift, agile P” ganesh picking up lot other things on their way.
All of us met at the resort, had welcome drinks. Cameras being right on job… few camera covers were brand new. After breakfast we were supposed to play ‘The Gentleman’s Game’. And for not having a vacant ground as usual ranjit added some masala by indulging in an altercation with the resort guy. We shifted to the game of bowling. I played this game for the first time and top scorers enjoyed the applauds. We then had T-Shirt inaugurations and photo-video sessions from a sony handycam with out HDR.
We all changed in to same looking T-Shirts showing the pioneers print and then went out to play volleyball and there are winners without prizes. Then we danced to the tunes of RJ prithvi’s DJ actually organized for other team outing from other electronics company. Then started the most interesting part of the day… cricket game… teams are divided based on chits and I being in the team comprising of star players like popat were the favourites and the result was similar to Indian team being the favourites in the tournament. The cricket ground witnessed fights for batting, direct hit to circling buildings an out, an over having >6 balls, 1D and 2D inplace, superb catch by ranjit, superb bowling by suneel, captain declaring a player retired-hurt for the reason of limited overs, run-outs, more runs scored by batting team sitting in pavilion, two players coming to bat at a time, serious fight between popat and king for last over batting and many more heated arguments with the umpire… it was all fun and back to basics…
“Why the match ended and why we are feeling hungry was the expression on all our faces….”
After lunch with minded P’s & Q’s, water sports welcomed us. Lazy River was almost dead, roller coaster water rides were superb, simply awesome and the time spent in the wave pool with many beautiful belly dancers around us was memorable.
Soon gathered in our studio room and sat leisurely for in-house planned activities. The LCD and PAS arranged and fixed by satti and deep was showing priceless and truly appreciable memories of my 4year college days in the big screen in front of us. The jpeg images pushed all of us in a time capsule to sit in either section A or B or C. The long loose clothing with out in-shirts, hair styles by huzurabad saloons, missing friends’ photos… we went back to 1997-2001.
The game of tambola killed time but was attractive with gifts and the word game tightly planned for bending the tummy’s but named after bechkam was not just a bit tough to many. Chance for each and everyone to share their experiences and updates and happenings in their life till date with comments from rest all made everyone lighter in heart. Ravindranath songs crept in between with karaoke… cloud 9 of bryan adams suiting the celebrations. His song “sasivadane…” is still alive in my mind.
Madhusudhan the “chinnadana… ” fame sung a song specially written by anil for the get together event, marked the end of the story.
The sumptuous dinner + good-byes
Phir milenge dost.