The Reunion

Few of us: Jedi, Carlee, Sandy, Ruchika, Baner, Hari, me, Walia, Shailesh and magloo at Dublin

Seventeen colleagues, six seniors @ Hotel Chola Sheraton, Chennai. This was an event I was looking forward to, for a long time. I was told by the senior batch that they had a reunion sometime in April last year, where all of them who joined ITC-PSPD/PPD, working in the "middle-of-nowhere"s met once again. And so in July 06, when sigma17 (that's what our group has been named by His Highness :P) were departing to their individual assignments across the country, we bid goodbyes with hopes of a reunion on similar lines.

And it happened! Somewhere in the middle of May, after a lot of pestering by Carlos (thank u carlee), we get a directive from His Highness that we should be planning a reunion. Though it was an official program where we were supposed to be discussing our work over the past one year and challenges faced by our businesses, I can say that we all were excited with the idea of catching up with each other after long! With a lot of deliberation over dates (for availability of all 23 concerned), amidst discussions over what's the agenda going to be, the after-hour plans and all such things, we finally got geared for the affaire-de-grand on June 10-11.

The reunion was as memorable as a reunion is supposed to be. Though work @ ITC involves a lot of travel, the group was still large enough to have been able to meet everyone through the last year. Infact I am one of those who have travelled a lot with ITC, and yet, out of the seventeen of us, there were 3 whom I hadn't met since induction. And when we all met on Saturday evening over a cack session at one of the suites in Chola, I just remembered the saying "When you meet someone after long, you realise that some things, good or bad, don't change" :-) And the group was just the same when we left! Same decibel level, same arguments, same leg pulling, same bakras and bakris :P, the non-stop ruchika and ruchi, the neta nilay, the funda-guru carlee, the sober jhaji, my dessert-partner tashi, the krrish-o-maniac hari, the ever-blissful lavs, the nawab yash, the sutta-lover-cum-teacher sandy, the happy dudes walia and shailu, the roti-breaker magloo, the PJ-god Banner, and last but not the least Professor Piran. We missed u Mankame, though I'm sure that even you haven't changed: your obsession with incense sticks hasn't faded away with the holy-smoke!

Some of the most memorable moments over the two days:

- Sat night session at Chola: "What are we going to do for the next two days? We have to plan the session". Intense discussion, agenda being jotted down, and there Baner makes a Heroic entry straight from Delhi! Loud roar, hugs, jokes, and session dropped from the discussion into a Daaru party!

- His Highness's "sack-them-all" act - enacting a butcher with a knife!

- DUBLIN! The Disc at Park Sheraton. We all had our sunday evening bash there! Great music, all exotic booze and the floor! A few pretty females! And not to mention the two brave members of sigma17 (one of them engaged!) who made a sweep on one of the females.

- Seeing a bald-guy dance at Dublin and realising that it was Sanath Jaisuriya :-)

- The look on the faces of those-few who saw the bill at Dublin: "Jo chadhi thi sab utar gayi yaar"!

- The morning after: "Yesshhh, we will begin the shesshion at 9:00 tomorrow, pakkaaa", say the drunkards! They end up at 10:30!

- Walia's "Bhookh lagi" act at 2:30 midnight in Nilay's room, where he is totally besotted, and pleading us for getting some food ordered: "Kuch to khila do, main bhookha hoon. Maine kuch nahin khaaya, sirf daaru pi!"

A lot many more! Here and there! Secrets unveiled. Crushes discovered. Work problems shared. Cribs and more cribs. Fighting over who's in a deeper shit. Arguing who's boss is more khadus. Sigma17, and Sigma23 rocks!

Working together brings an altogether different kind of bonding. We are all working for a purpose. Even though at times it all seems aimless, But I would like to believe that we are all contributing to the bottomline. We have a common goal, and a common culture to share and crib about. We come from similar educational backgrounds, have similar (and yet eerily innovative) way of looking at things, and we all face the same problems while bringing change in the organisation. We all face the "kids-with-fat-package" glances at our respective sites, and yet we all work our way through. We have seen the company together, in a two-month long induction, where we, in a huge group of seventeen, have managed to put our ideas together, agreed to disagree, and yet present proposals on a consensus. And here, working as colleagues, we have made friends, which stay, irrespective of everything else. The reunion just reinforced it!

Cheers to Sigma17, Cheers to ITC!

PS: I realised that we didn't click a single group photograph! Given the fact that we all have been given digicams by the company, some at the top management are really going to be ashamed of us! ;-)
My answer to that would be as filmy as His Highness: "Jo tasveer dil mein hai, uski kaagaz par kya ahemiyat!" :-)