...continued from gathering at Eagleton Golf Resort - 1.
This is a gathering of school friends who were classmates from LKG to X standard . at Saint Charles Borromeo School, Bhadravati. Not all were classmates for the entire period of 12 years. Some had left in between when their parents had to move to another city or some may have joined in between. I studied from LKG to II standard and left the school when my father took up a job at Delhi. Though we were classmates for many for just 4 years, that too at that young age where I couldn't remember most of the friends after quitting the school, the link with my school & Bhadravati remained. So when I met my classmates after 42 years at Arohas Eco Resort I'd gelled into the group in a few hours. That's the specialty of this group- the bonding is super quick.
The celebrations began almost as soon as 10 of us had gathered. Then there was a small break, few of us napped and rested. Around 4-30 a part of the group played cricket which I missed since I'd gone for a walk. We all gathered in a hall for another round of celebrations.
Left to right: Naveen, Dr. Balaji, Nandeesh and Shivaprakash in the background.
Dr. Vijayanand, Nagendra, Dr. Balaji, Srinath and Shivaprakash.
The party mood looks rather sober in this picture. No, it was quite lively with multiple conversations taking place at the same time. Reminiscing the good old days.
Here's a collage of a few pictures, going clockwise starting with top-left: Shivaprakash from Hubballi; Vinod the poet from Bhadravati, Dayanand from Bhadravati & Prem from Mysuru, Girish & Biligiri.
Standing: Vasudev, Srinivas & Swarup. Dr. Manjunath, Dayanand & Vasanth. Prasanna, Gautam & Venkatesh.
Prasanna, Nandish, Gautam, Venkatesh & Rajesh.
Of the 33 members, 30 are present in this picture. The missing members are- Deveram, Balu & Nagaraj.
What started with a group of seven or eight grew into 20+ group shot!
Deveram was absent until now makes a reappearance. Vasu and Nagendra reminiscing some school time incident.
School and college friends had nick names. Here two names are quite prominent- Kaka and Rani. Neither of them are ever addressed by their original names- Vasanth and Swarup. Every nick name had some funny incident behind it. I was curious about what. This gathering I took the liberty of digging the past. As per Vasanth, it was probably in 5th standard, someone asked where his house was. His home was in VISL quarters, opposite to Kaka shop. He had barely uttered that and someone started calling him Kaka and the bane stuck! Swarup's story will remain confidential.
The day happened to be Vinod's birthday. The organizers had ordered a cake, a nice little one. Honestly speaking, I dread cake cutting rituals. Firstly, I can't bear to see food going waste and the other thing is the birthday person plight at being messed up. Shivu and Deveram suddenly became active, prodding Vinod to cut the cake,
Thankfully, the caking smearing was limited, something that could be cleaned with a few paper napkins. BTW, we have two poets in this picture- Vinod and Srini, I've seen one of Vinod's compositions shared in the group. I've read many of Srini's compositions, most were spontaneous. Srini would compose odes for birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, special days like friends day. He had even composed a few when Puneet Rajkumar passed away.
Deveram's childlike mischievous behavior continues. Adavi, Rajesh and Gautam watch over the conversation between Deveram & Anil.
A round of cheers from Posa, Rajesh, Darshan, Srinath & Gautam.
Around 9-30 or so we headed to the dining room. Dinner was a decent spread. As usual I had a few items.. salad, rice, curry and another dish. I skipped deserts altogether. After dinner we congregated again at the hall to continue the celebrations. This is a post dinner session just outside the hall.
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