On Sunday the 17th of April, 2011 some members of the Secunderabad Club objected to the noise being made at a table in the Air Conditioned Bar at the Sailing Club. Little did they know that this was a get together of some people who were meeting after 40 years. Luckily they excused the boisterousness of the gang. But who were these guys? And what prevented them from meeting for so long?

This was a part of the HPS Begumpet ISC Batch of 1972. A Batch which is almost legendary in school (or should be anyway). It was the batch that gave HPS its first 5 pointer in ISC. It was the batch that brought the Pentangular Trophy to Hyderabad. It was the batch that was the first to be given IIT coaching. And so on.

But it took the India visit of Dr. Pradeep Ramaiah to galvanise this motley crew into action. Several of the members had been meeting off and on as part of their business or as part of their social networking. And inspite of being part of rather disparate circles, had seen the circles meet even if tangentially. But when Pradeep suggested they all meet, it kind of triggered an avalanche of activity and so the luncheon meet at the Sailing Club took shape.

The disappointing thing of course was that Chitrajit Cariappa who had reworked his roster to make sure he was the pilot for the Delhi Hyderabad Delhi sector fell prey to ‘delay in incoming aircraft’ and got stuck at Delhi. But Rajiv Gupta, Vijay Marur, John Chandy. CJ Karira, Pradeep Ramaiah, Piush Bahl, RVS Ramakrishna, Arun Rao, Jaikumar Gupta and Shankar Mani made it a pleasant afternoon for ten.

Because it never was a meeting of ten guys in their mid fifties. It was a get together of ten kids who were barely sixteen. As naughty secrets tumbled out of closets and they reminisced about teachers and the pranks that had been played time lost meaning and the flyovers of Hyderabad vanished and railway crossings popped up like little mementoes.