It has been raining old classmates of late. Well not exactly raining, but sort of drizzling. And here I have to mention that I am talking of those from my postgraduate days studying Economics at the prestigious Kariavattom University (the class of ’81, to be precise). By the way, you may absolutely not ask me how I wound up at the aforementioned *prestigious* institution. Truly speaking what’s more intriguing is how I got out of said *prestigious* institution, with pass marks to boot. Anyways that not being the point of this post, I will give that a miss.

When there has been a drought for thirty-three long years (except for a couple of lunches with The Nuts), a drizzle is much appreciated and welcomed with open arms. Truly speaking finding 15 people out of a class of 25, and being on the verge of discovering two more (we know which country they are in but have no clue what they are up to, there!) is not bad at all.

Now this is the kind of thing I expected to happen when I got into social networking: long lost classmates popping out at me from all over and Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, not those total strangers who wanted to be ‘fraands,’ and one who suggested meeting up prior to tying the knot, totally disregarding my much married status, and another who gave all that a go-bye and in his direct way asked, “Will you marry me?” I kid you not. Sadly Orkut did not rise to the occasion and help me locate school or college-mates. It needed Facebook to come along and reveal many of those faces from long ago, more so in these past couple of months.

Predictably so, it has been an exciting few weeks. College is after all college, and I should say that in spite of being a misfit among the intellectuals that thronged the Kariavattom University, I can say with certainty that those two years spent there, were the best days of my student life. So now we have formed a Facebook group with those ‘found’, and have been busy filling each other up on the lost years. Those already in are being pestered endlessly for any scrap of information on those as yet undiscovered. Phone calls are being made back and forth to arrange a possible meet.

The result? A re-union scheduled for next month, a mini-meet, because at short notice only a dozen are in a position to make it. Those out of the state, and country, have to make do with pictures (which we are going to click, yaaay!) for now. So why am I writing this post? Yes, of course, I have a motive, not a sinister one. So chillax. I want to find a few more of these people from the photographs below (which, by the way, has both senior and junior classes) so they can attend the meet too. In case you were wondering, yes, it was my bright idea to cut the photograph in two to accommodate it in my album.

The left half

The right half

I want to ask readers these questions on the off chance that I might be lucky enough to get a positive response:

Are you one of them? If so contact me.

Are you related to one of them, a son, a daughter, niece, nephew, brother, sister, a relative by marriage? Please inform them and ask them to contact me. You can give me their details too, and I will gladly contact them.

Are you a neighbour? Or do you recognise them from some part of your life and know where they are at present, or at least where they were a few years back? Contact me, give me details. I will take it up from there.

Are you a colleague? Please let them know.

Are you a student of theirs? Many of them are in the teaching field. Do let me know if they have taught you.

With three separate colleges and six different schools under my belt, you have not seen the last of this topic on my blog. I will be back with more. It is a pity that not all have the same enthusiasm to find old friends or meet them, but then different people, different lives and ways, I guess. As for me, I am elated to meet people, of course only as long as you let me be. There is definitely that.

Now, my regular readers can make a guess as to which one I am in the above pictures. 😉