Mangalore: Reunion of Milagres Students after Two Decades
Pics: Prajwal Ukkuda
Daijiworld Media Network –Mangalore (TU/SP)
Mangalore, Jan 4: Some who had scored zero in mathematics became bankers; some who had been repeatedly corrected by the teachers have now been managing their own companies; for some, their teachers have become regular customers…all these incidents and experiences in addition to several others, were revealed after a gap of over 20 years.
As many as 35 school mates from out of a total of 72 belonging to the 1978-88 batch of Milagrese School turned up at the School Hall on Saturday January 3 to share their experiences and to relive the memories of their school days under the theme 'Shine Bright… Be Light.. .’. The specialty of the reunion programme was the presence of their teachers who were honoured on the occasion. Now, most of them are retired from their service.
Introducing themselves to strike a closer rapport, many said unequivocally that 'this is one of the great moments of our life, we never thought of reunion as a possibility’. Anil Francis, an engineer at the Oil Rig came all the way from Jordan to meet his old mates. While Shivananda Shetty, a business consultant and Praveen D'souza, manager of HSBC Bank did not find any reason to come from Mumbai. Praveen B Nayak, a KAS officer working in Puttur put aside all his meetings and assignments to be able to be here.
Recalling one of the golden moments in his school days, Mithesh, who owns an automobile shop in the city said he wrote 'My cat, my cat, my cat….' continuously for 10 lines in his answer sheet, in reply to a question that asked him to write ten lines on 'my cat or my dog' because of utter confusion.
According to Dr Rakesh, surgeon at Yenepoya Hospital, it was Prasad Shetty, another class mate, who is running an advertising firm in Bangalore who took lot of pains in bringing the old friends together under one roof after a long gap.
After all, from where this idea of reunion emerged? All the reunited school mates should be thankful to a community website Orkut.com. Edmond D'souza, an employee of Ford Company in UK pioneered this event but he was not able to be present at the programme. He brought together his school mates in orkut account to keep himself updated. This helped in the reunion becoming a reality. In a matter of two months the reunion programme had been arranged.
Former principal Fr Gregory W Vas, Fr Mendonca, principal Fr Lawrence D'souza, Vice-principal Herald Monteiro etc., also witnessed the reunion.
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