Reflections - At our recent 25 year Reunion meeting at REC Trichy

August 2, 2008

I was not clued into the RECT 78-83 yahoo group forum until a few months ago. I just kept in touch (mostly, infrequent) with a handful of friends from those days. T Suresh, S. Muralidharan, Dinakaran, A.S. Ravishankar, R Krishnan, Toughie (AN Ravikumar), Gandhi (Subbu Vempati), Nipun, Blacks (Sridhar Ananthachari) to name a few.

When I got myself into the yahoo group, I was besieged with a flurry of emails with people talking profusely with each other and making a lot of connections with their long lost friends. The number of pairs of connections with 200 people in the batch quickly stacks up.

I was very enthusiastic about making it there and actually made it there for a day. Most of the morning was spent by wandering around the hotel and meeting and recognizing old faces. It was a lot of fun!

I met a few more friends over breakfast and travelled by bus (much like old times) to the campus. Though it seemed to have changed a lot due to our faded memories, perhaps, nothing much has changed at all. Bhelec, Amutham restaurant, dry and derelict roadside and the good old clock tower. We were greeted by a liveried band!

I offered to make a trip down the memory lane and speak a few thoughts that were busily buzzing in my mind since I started making preparations to attend the reunion. After the old Princi and the new Princi had their time on the stage and cooled down on amicable terms after their debate regarding REC's education philosophy and uniqueness, I was called upon the stage to speak on behalf of the batch.

What follows is a rough transcription from my memory:

"Friends, Families and Sirs,

I was not on Yahoo group of our batch till 3-4 months ago. Once I had signed up to it and caught up with the flurry of emails among many classmates, the names and faces of several people kept popping up in my head. I have been able to recognize about 60% of the people so far and I am still working on the rest of them!

As I look around this hall, there are a number of people wiser and greyer, bigger, better and richer. I am sure that we have all come to this stage over the last 25 years mostly due to our efforts and some luck of being at the right place at the right time.

But, if we look back at the eventful 5 years that we spent at REC before the 25 years which seemed to have quickly passed by, we accomplished success because of not only what we did in the 25 years but also what we learnt in those 5 years between 1978 - 1983. The 5 years were eventful and formative at a very critical juncture of our lives. I am not just referring to the Engineering education alone and the degree that readily gave us some status in life.

I thought I would talk about the things I had learned and what these 5 years meant to my life. I am sure that several of you will be able to relate to some of these and perhaps, have some more of your own.

I vividly remember many vigorous vocabulary sessions with friends exploring the histories of the words we had come across that day. I met here some of the most brilliant people who had come from interior parts of TN and the rest of India. To this day, several words come to me with very vivid stories.

If it were not for REC, I would not have been bitten by the reading bug. I came from nameless, brandless schools across A.P. I was not very exposed to reading. When I came to REC, I remember loving the big, well-stocked and peaceful library and spending many an evening there.

If it were not for REC, I would not have sensed my first taste of independence and being in charge, of myself. At the time, my family was about 36 hours and 3 trains/1 bus away from Trichy. Planning and doing that arduous journey was a lesson in itself. Making a home away from home, living with friends, for 5 long years and taking care of day-to-day life along with studies was a great lesson.

If it were not for REC, I would not have visited Tiruvayyaru situated on the musically fertile Cauvery belt. I still remember very clearly. A friend, KB Balachander, who is not present here at the moment, literally dragged me to Tiruvayyaru in January 1983. I was not very intersted in Carnatic music at all. I went there, partook the festivities, visited Tyagaraja's house and the shrine before which he composed numerous Kritis. It so happened, later, that I became a very passionate student of Carnatic Music. In retrospect, I knew that my visit to Tiruvayyaru was momentous. I never was able to go to Tiruvayyaru again for one reason or the other.

If it were not for REC, I would not have learnt Tamil. I don't know why, but, I fell in love with the language. I did not know a trace of Tamil before I came to Trichy. When I expressed a little interest, several friends of mine, Sankar (EEE), Kandasamy (Mech), Balasubramaniam (Chem) to name a few, were too eager to drill Tirukkural, Tiruppugal into me! Now, when I make my annual pilgrimage to Chennai for the music season in December, I mix in completely and act, feel like a local!

These are just a few of my recollections. I am sure you have several of your own. We are what we are due to our experiences. Every experience - small or big - has a lesson. Every mini lesson has a micro learning! We surely had our share over the last 30 years.

On behalf of all of you and myself, I would like to say 'Thanks' to the institution that has brought us this far."