Silver Reunion 1986- Batch !!!! (Part- 1)

India has changed and Chennai by leaps and bounds.

I was in Chennai very recently and came back only few weeks ago.  (Saturday 20^th August), after a so called three weeks reprieve or a holiday, or by whatever name you could call it!!

The main event was the Stanley 1986 batch silver jubilee meet, which was held a week after our (family) arrival in Chennai.

Sixteen of us, including Arun, Bala, and Chandru’s family have settled for our exciting journey on the 29^th afternoon from Manchester, preceded by a few months suspense and excitement over the dates and the venue.

Well, we were grounded even before we started and thus how we began.  The Airbus 380 of Emirates luckily developed technical snags, before the flight was on its drive way and we were technically incarcerated for nearly 3 hours before we were let off with a ten pound voucher for each one of us for a quick snack.

The flight eventually took off around 8pm locally and to our dismay we reached Chennai 8pm 24hrs later.  We needlessly lost the whole frigging Saturday and a weekend.

Amma (my mom) as usual was well prepared for these adversaries.  She had planned a traditional Aadi Kuzh offering day on the following Sunday.  It was the Tamil month of Aadi and what else?  Lots of food, everything from goat to chicken, dry fish to prawns, spectrum of vegetarian bundle , chopped, cleaned and cooked for the traditional feast of over indulgence, which literally took my colonic movements for an hurricane.

The onslaught was too much for them to handle within 24 hrs of my arrival in India and they started misbehaving and have not stopped yet.  Mind you….for three long weeks.  Nonetheless, I was not worried to the least and went on upsetting the entire colonic components by trying varieties of cuisines, ably supported by my brother amongst the various nooks and corners of Chennai and Tamil Nadu!!

Hari, had arrived in Mysore, by this time from Manchester, arrived at Chennai, with his sister’s families on Tuesday.  The next few days were well spent with his family on nostalgic walkabout, Ilayaraja’s music, with a few good curries at home and also a Chinese in Velachery, a busy suburb near Perungudi, our current abode.

The traditional visit to the beach was done at the Tiruvanmiyoor beach during this week and also the phone calls were made to the friends, who were eagerly looking for ward to the Re –union, like most of us.

The weekend was in fact booked at one of the sea side resorts of Mamallapuram for our batch mates and we were nonetheless too excited, like last year.

The event, needless to say,  was well planned and organised by our friend Karthikeyan, who with the help of few other good souls , managed to host a very good weekend of gala and bash.  Karthikeyan has blossomed into leader with good planning, organising, communicating skills, which are hallmarks of good leadership!!

Friends had arrived from US and few other distant places were on the phone, with courtesy calls, whilst I took Hari for a trip around Chennai with my cousin Karthi, who served us really well, once again as a chauffer, along the alleys and the ever veining, arterial roads of bustling Chennai, whilst our better halves were frantically busy shopping in TNagar.

The weekend started with a nice welcome lunch for the bashers at Sea breeze Hotel, a moderate sized and furnished with reasonable facilities, a beach side resort just around the corner of the great Mamalla or Mahabalipuram.  The great pallavas, who built the city, ruled the Southern India, and possibly bit of north, with Kanchipuram as the Capital between 600 and 800 AD with full vigour and creativity.

They were great builders and Mamallapuram is a feather in their cap and has survived the test of time and coastal sandy and salt laden erosion for nearly fourteen hundred years!!

I am fairly sure that the great builders would not have visioned the 21^st century, Mamallapuram, as it is now.  It is a beautiful, thriving coastal fishing town, now,  flannelled by beach resorts and flocked by tourists alike, both local and International!

I wish I explore it more, when I am there next time.

Well, rooms were allotted and occupied, whilst the long lost friends and faces of different continents started gossiping, catching up with lost time, of by gone memories and events, about careers, families and about the perennial secret sides.  The afternoon was spent on friendly catching up moments, strolls along the beach side, relaxing along the pool side, whilst the families as ever pulling us on different directions.

I mean the kiddies, not the better halves.

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