Technology did a world of good for the Carmel Garden Matriculation School 1978 batch as they got together after 39 years to celebrate those happy memories at a private hotel here recently.
“For multiple reasons, we could not connect at all. But, we badly needed a platform to effectively get together,” said A. Padmanabhan from Bengaluru.
“Once, we created a WhatsApp group the rest came easy. We started this in October and kept adding photos and names till the day before we met,” said Sudhakar Balakrishnan.
“We were 75 students in the batch, but about 60 of us have gathered here today. We have lost ten of our friends due to various reasons and we remember them and their families specially today,” said Sajeev M. Rajan.
The students now turned businessmen, doctors, engineers, lawyers, defence personnel and software specialists, were the last Plus One batch of the school.
On Saturday, they went to the school and met their former teachers (who had come on invitation) and the present Principal and shared their joy with them. They even spent some jolly good time at the classroom they had last studied and stood. “We even stood on those benches to remember those good old days and clicked some photos too generously,” quickly added Mr. Venkatesan Chowdhary.
“Today, we have people from Pollachi, Chennai, Madurai, Bangalore, Dubai, Australia, Czech Republic and The United States,” he added.
“Some of us here were bald and some with grey hair. It was here that the cognitive power of identifying each other came into focus,” said R. Viswanath, who runs a music school in Coimbatore.
Rajesh Lund, Farid Husain (Chennai), R. Jothinathan (Mettur), Dr. Ramani Kanth and Dr. Ganesh Babu said that it was an occasion to remember and it gave them all goosebumps..
“I am happy that this amazing thing happened. There were 100 reasons not to come, but I travelled 30 hours to catch up with my friends. The thrill of seeing them today made me cry. I am privileged,” said N. Murugappan, co-founder of Soais, a US-based software company.
Later, the boys-turned-men had an audio-visual presentation, released a special souvenir.
