St. Mary’s Alumni Dinner March 13, 2009

I had been so looking forward to this event I feel drained out now and am suffering from withdrawal symptoms – the only cure is to have another re-union soon. Guys we had the most rollicking time ever. Bharat Kakodkar was down from Pune and he drove me down from Andheri to school (I sent my car home – no point taking two cars). In the past six months I have passed school at least ten times on the way to the Sales Tax office in Mazgaon (you get to go there if your stars are reealllllly baaad) but never had the mood to drop into school – though the thought did cross my mind a couple of times!

Bharat and I caught up with each others lives post school over the hour odd long drive. It was really nice to see that the old boy has not changed a bit in spite of life’s twists and turns. We reached school at 8pm sharp and met up with a whole lot of buddies after 32 loooonnnnggggggg years! Adarbad was there with our entry passes, God bless him! We had a whale of a time yakking, eating bunchops, guzzling beer and just catching up and ribbing each other – boy was it fun or what! Met with two Olympians from school – Adille Sumariwalla, the sprinter and Cawas Billimoria the judo bronze medal winner. These boys have achieved so much it is amazing – Cawas used to be a nice roly poly sweet character in school – now he is transformed into sheer muscle and his demeanor is still as calm as it was in school. He now heads the sports section in Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Bandra East.

We decided to get in touch with our old English teacher – a lady who gave us our values in life, a lady with impeccable credentials and a heart of gold. Look forward to meeting her in the near future – hope she remembers me!

We had a walk around the school corridors for old times’ sake – do remember Alan Roberts and the obstacle races he used to set up for us. We had to run round the corridors jumping over benches, on to the grounds and back into the hall – used to be so much fun. Went down to the junior hall and relived the good times – we used to have roller skating in school, I still remember playing ‘chor-police’ on roller skates – used to be an awesome time. I was responsible for having skating banned in school by Principal Kenneth Dyer (it’s a secret friends – now in the open as I cannot be prosecuted!). The incident happened when I saw Yorick Nazareth a very gol gappa type of character learning to skate – there was a large crowd through whom I was weaving through at break-neck speed and on spying Yorick I locked my wheels in his wheel and sped away. I did this just in mischief ok – no harm was intended. Yorick did not see me coming as he was concentrating on maintaining his balance- as my wheels locked the guy just went for a toss and landed on his backside. As I mentioned earlier he was over-weight, and in breaking his fall with his hand he ended up fracturing it! That was it! Dyer came to know about it – and in the next days assembly skating was banned. I really felt sorry for the guy and for all those who lost out on the joys of roller skating thereafter just because of one mischief laden moment. The above and a whole lot of other memories came flooding back in that august environment – it was truly nostalgic.

After about the third round of beer it started raining and perforce drove us into the dining hall for dinner before we had finished drinking. Father Everist Nunes announced the singing of the school song – and we were all bundled together in the senior hall singing the school song at the top of our voice – I video recorded this and have it uploaded on picasa. The link is given below: http://picasaweb.google.com/gmbfca/Sm77?authkey=Gv1sRgCJj2g5LuuPf_Lw#

The food was lovely with the bunchops and biryani being awesome, the corn fish also was extremely tasty. I found Sid waiting patiently to get in line for some pani puri – and the line was long. I told him boss, that’s not the way to do it, I just caught him by his hand and made him stand innocently at the head of the line chatting, made him put out his hand for some pani puri and that’s it! Never believed in standing in line in school and did not see the point in doing it after 32 years!! But Sid got his pani puri –God bless him. An elderly character approached me and asked which year – when I mentioned 77, he said “you are a baccha man, I am 66” – I told him, “good for you mate” and shook hands!

After dinner, the rain having stopped, we had the ever enterprising Karim organizing more beer (the school stock was over) – we had another round post dinner. Then it was time for the group photograph, where we caught a kid who had passed out in 2005 and burdened him with about a dozen cameras to take our shots. I told him quietly to disappear with the cameras – he would make a neat packet – just kidding guys! The kiddo diligently stood and took photos on all the cameras - we thanked him profusely for the same. After that some of the guys who missed out on dinner decided to go to Café Mondegar for more beer – they wanted to sit in cooler environments as it had become hot and humid post the rains. I was pressed to join them – but it was already way past 11 pm and I opted out as the next day was an early start for me. Would have loved to join them, maybe next time will join and party through the night!