We were meeting for the first time since we passed out of campus. In the 12 years that had gone by, the world had become almost irrecognisable from the time we'd spent our wild and free-spirited days. Some of my batch-mates had, too. Some were greyer, some had lost their hirsuteness. Some were broader at the waist, some had crows-feet making appearances. Some were married a decade, a few still single. Some were divorced or separated, most had kids and families.
The sounds of laughter, however, revealed that between us, things were pretty much the same.
Being students of an advertising school meant that our story-telling abilities were pretty well honed and tales about the decade gone by, over the perfunctory bonfire, would make it a re-union worth looking forward to.
Relationships was a recurring theme, and Vivek began to speak about how Lovely and he struck the right balance in their marriage.
Vivek Fitkariwala and Lovely Mehta met on campus, dated for the better part of the two years they spent there, got married after, had two lovely children and have been going about their merry lives in copybook fashion.
Vivek was pretty much the happy-go-lucky chappie, who went about campus life like it was a box to be ticked off. One of the brightest we had, he still wasn't wasn't one to stick out much in a class of only 42 students, except for his love for really colourful clothing and Govinda's movies.
Lovely, on the other hand, came across like her years on campus would be her most important years ever. She was among the more diligent students, whose average questions-per-lecture were more than the rest of us put together.
There were as yin and yang as they came.
"Ultimately, it boils down to who has the last say on any given issue", he said.
" Between Lovely and I, we've very clear demarcations about whose diktat to follow whenever there's an issue. When it comes to large ones that really matter, she never comes in the way of what I say or do. On the little things, however, I give her complete freedom to operate the way she wants to"
There were curious, amused glances being exchanged all over.
"Erm...what kind of issues are we talking about? What are ones that Lovely handles? " - I don't quite remember who ventured to ask.
"The small ones, like I said. For example, she had carte blanche over the schools we put our children in, the kind of property we invested in, the colour we used to paint our house and stuff like that"
"Oh! And what are the large ones where you go unquestioned?", popped up from my mouth.
"The ones where our very future is at stake - if India should have conducted the nuclear tests in Pokhran, whether Y2K was indeed the threat that the world thought it was, were there indeed WMDs in Iraq? And so on.", he beamed.
The rest of us looked at each other in silence, soaking in this piece of wisdom. We then went back to staring into the dying embers of the bonfire. Dawn was slowly breaking.
The sounds of laughter, however, revealed that between us, things were pretty much the same.
Being students of an advertising school meant that our story-telling abilities were pretty well honed and tales about the decade gone by, over the perfunctory bonfire, would make it a re-union worth looking forward to.
Relationships was a recurring theme, and Vivek began to speak about how Lovely and he struck the right balance in their marriage.
Vivek Fitkariwala and Lovely Mehta met on campus, dated for the better part of the two years they spent there, got married after, had two lovely children and have been going about their merry lives in copybook fashion.
Vivek was pretty much the happy-go-lucky chappie, who went about campus life like it was a box to be ticked off. One of the brightest we had, he still wasn't wasn't one to stick out much in a class of only 42 students, except for his love for really colourful clothing and Govinda's movies.
Lovely, on the other hand, came across like her years on campus would be her most important years ever. She was among the more diligent students, whose average questions-per-lecture were more than the rest of us put together.
There were as yin and yang as they came.
"Ultimately, it boils down to who has the last say on any given issue", he said.
" Between Lovely and I, we've very clear demarcations about whose diktat to follow whenever there's an issue. When it comes to large ones that really matter, she never comes in the way of what I say or do. On the little things, however, I give her complete freedom to operate the way she wants to"
There were curious, amused glances being exchanged all over.
"Erm...what kind of issues are we talking about? What are ones that Lovely handles? " - I don't quite remember who ventured to ask.
"The small ones, like I said. For example, she had carte blanche over the schools we put our children in, the kind of property we invested in, the colour we used to paint our house and stuff like that"
"Oh! And what are the large ones where you go unquestioned?", popped up from my mouth.
"The ones where our very future is at stake - if India should have conducted the nuclear tests in Pokhran, whether Y2K was indeed the threat that the world thought it was, were there indeed WMDs in Iraq? And so on.", he beamed.
The rest of us looked at each other in silence, soaking in this piece of wisdom. We then went back to staring into the dying embers of the bonfire. Dawn was slowly breaking.
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