Rendezvous of Class 82 of SDM College of Business Management
Pics by T V Kishore
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore
Mangalore, Dec 28: Class 82 (batch of 1982) students of SDM College of Business Management relived the memories of their student days in a day long rendezvous held at the college premises with the theme ‘rewind, relive and rejoice’. In all 40 students (students in 1982) out of the 52 alive, now parents and grandparents also, participated in the get together. The alumni congregated in the same classroom they last studied and Principal of the College of Business Management Dr Devaraj called a mock attendance giving nostalgic memories of those bygone days. Two saplings were in the campus premises in memory of this meaningful gathering.
The class 82 alumni association has been the result of concerted efforts of 7 months that were spent in tracing their batch mates, scattered in different parts of the globe and organizing this get together. Thanks to the world wide web, most of the batch mates were traced on line and extended their cooperation and support to the idea of coming together of their batch mates. Those who were not accessible through net or had relocated over a period of time, were traced physically going to their homes by the enthusiastic batch mates. Says Gautham Ghate, a class 82 alumni. “One of our classmates got this brainwave and everyone joined in the effort. Though we were totally 55 students now only 52 are alive and we came to know about it only when we tried to locate them. It is a memorable event as it is the coming together of an assortment of people working in diverse fields and in different corners of the globe”.
An interesting aspect the batch mates came to know during this get together is that one of their batch mates had become a grandfather. Children of two batch mates are now the students of the same college. One of the girls of the batch, whom many believed had died, attended the get together much to the consternation of her batch mates. One of the girls of class 82, who lost both her legs in an accident, came all the way from Nasik along with her husband to participate in the get together.
“Though some of the batch mates were in touch with one another the very idea of coming together of 40 students gave us goose bumps and when we really met it was like an out of the world experience ” said Adil Fareed, who came for this get together from Dubai.
Keeping in sync with the theme of rewind, relive and rejoice the students wore uniform T’s with printed logo and cap to complete the theme of rewinding and reliving old memories. Mementos were given to the principal as well as to all the alumni who attended the get-together. They had a sumptuous breakfast together, a delightful lunch and an equally delightful evening party is planned (outside the campus) to rejoice and celebrate the union of class 82.
In the course of 28 years there has been a sea-change in the appearances of the then students with age taking its toll. “I could not recognized some of our batch mates and I think many of them might have felt the same after seeing me. But who cares. It is the spirit that matters. Time and age waits for none”, says V S Chandrashekar, who arrived from Delhi, exhibiting the spirit of rewind, relive and rejoice in its fullest.