After a good 35 years, half a life time, school mates get together and what else to expect but a blast for the past.

Batch mates of the 1982 class of St Pauls Udaipur got together after three and a half decades, more so by virtue of being connected through social media rather than anything else.  Hazy memories were polished to crisp recollections as over the last few years students of the class of 1982, now spread across cross sector careers and countries, got together through a WhatApp group, once they were connected in sub group spreads on FB.

Once they got talking on a regular basis…they thought, well why not!  The platform can be made a reality and most of the members of the group agreed to make the Independence weekend extension a memorable one.  They are not going to forget Independence Day 2017 for the rest of their lives.

Pramod Kunder, Piyush Mehta and Liaquate Qutub along with a few more from the group, coordinated the plan and the remaining team in Udaipur made sure that their visiting classmates have a blast of a time.  A resort at the monsoon scenic Jhadol was booked for two full days.  Piyush Mehta, the co-Founder and Managing Administrator of the social media group along with Pramod Kunder, Chandraprakash Mukrit and Liaquate got the ball rolling and landing right in the nets with panache.

After getting together on 13th, a few select members visited the St Pauls school and met with Father George  before proceeding for the get together.  They spoke at length about the activities that were rampant in the school during the earlier years and Father George assured that activities such as debate clubs, etc would be included in the current session.

As per Piyush and Liaquate, though meeting after 35 years, once the team got together for dinner at Rajbagh and then at the Jhadol resort, the memories came back and it did not seem as if so many years had passed.  During the earlier years, as the means of communication were not so fluid, the friends separated and went their separate ways – across professions and countries.

The 1982 batch, as per Pramod, is a mix of Doctors, Scientists, Lawyers, businessmen, Chartered Accountants, Company Secretaries, Engineers and Administrative Services. Working across different cities and countries, each one sharing his journey post school was a wonderful feeling and like you say, when with friends, the heart speaks.  Everyone of them agreed that Father Coutinho, under whose mentor-ship theirs was the last batch at St Pauls, had a major role to play in shaping their thought process, their character, their personality and their future.

Members of the batch who attended the 35 year reunion included:

Liaquate Qutub; Pramod Kunder, Rameshwar Jethi, Mukhrit N Verma, Piyush Mehta, Prabhulal Sharma, Anil Bhandari, Rakesh Karanpuria, Zarir Contractor, Kamaljeet Singh, Yogesh Chaudhary, Praveen Dungerwal, Shailendra Naik, Sanjay Sagarwat, Chandra Prakash, Prem Bomb, Ashish Sharma, Rajesh Rathore, Dilip Singh, Vikram Singh, Pankaj Mishra, Irvendra Singh, Kalit Bhandari, Siddharth Swami, Dinesh Vanwaria, Mohit Singhvi, Arun Sharma, Rajesh Chaplot, Prashant Vajpai, Rajeev Agarwal, Madhav Mukund and Anamendra Sharma.  Of course, many of the other could not attend for a variety of reasons, but have promised each other that the next gathering will be more comprehensive.