Nothing better than catching up with old Friends

At the beginning of 2025, I received a message about the passing away of one of our WASE batchmates, Ajith, who was 46 years old and had settled in London. It was quite a shocker to me, as in the previous year 2024, I had seen his photo with some of my other batchmates meeting up in Mumbai. He was battling a serious health condition then, and not many people knew, including the friends who were in the snap or me. Ajith was one of those high-energy, full-charge guys in the batch - "jiske honey se rounak aa jati thee". A munda Punjabi in 1998, who turned to a practising Sikh and Sardar later - someone I did not keep in contact with, but I never forgot and remembered him "The guy with a big smile and Josh".

A couple of weeks after this news, another batchmate sent me a team photo taken in 2003, asking me if I was the girl in the snap. And that the Project Manager in that snap had died a couple of days back. And that group photo was the snap shared with the message. He was my last reporting Manager in Wipro. I never tried keeping in contact with him, and later got to know that he had left the IT industry and had got into academics.

These 2 deaths made me think of reconnecting and meeting with my friends (school, college, work), and that is what I did in 2025. In April, I went to Trichur and met my 4-5 schoolmates and a collegemate after 2 years, and in the process happen to meet 1 NIIT mate after 27 years. In July went to Bangalore and met 2 fellow "Wasians " after 23 and 14 years, My Manager from CGI after 19 years. You may ask - what's the big deal, what do you gain? And to be frank thats how I used to feel - everyone is so busy in their own lives, where is the time to go around meeting people with no agenda and benefits. But I was wrong. We are not just what our family defines us to be, or what our job defines us. We are also defined by our friends and acquantainces, how we make them feel, how they make us feel. And so one needs to take that effort, make the trip at least once a year and reconnect and recharge.