Reunion for the IT Class of ’94 RVCE

The day that was – May 9th 2004

Reunion for the IT Class of ’94 RVCE

Just for those who missed out on the Reunion, here’s something to turn green with envy (

Preparations for the reunion were not completed until the last hour on Saturday, May 8th. Surendra managed to collect the reunion T-Shirts quite late and I was busy working out logistics for transportation till 9pm. I was to pick up Jayanthi and proceed to the Country Club along with Surendra’s family. Sanjay would pick up Keshav, Basava would pick up Smitha. Manoj would be on his own, so would be Ashwin who would come down to Country Club.

As is inevitable, we started late from Surendra’s house (blame it on his little daughter Savi () though I managed to pick up Jayanthi on time @9.45am. We headed towards Country Club on Mysore Road. While we drove past the famous RVCE falls near Bangalore University, we decided to stop over at RVCE. Being a Sunday, RVCE welcomed us with closed gates and a security guard. After a small explanation, the guard was nice enough to let us take a stroll within the campus. We parked our cars and headed straight to our IT block.

All blocks were locked but we still relived the nostalgia of sitting on the ‘katte’ around our IT block, last minute preparations for exams on the steps to our block and sitting on the ‘mori’ waiting infinitely for the buses to depart. Oh, those days!!! A new batch of IT students – three dogs slept peacefully at the entrance to our IT block. We observed that a new Telecommunication Block had emerged above our IT floor. We clicked away several photographs in front of the IT block.

The scene around our IT block remained essentially unchanged over 10 long years…then, we had a stroll around the sprawling campus. The sheer size of the campus was overwhelming to my wife and also several other non-RVCE spouses. (Surendra’s wife is also a RVCE junior and the daughter of erstwhile Mech professor Mr Gargesh) Our first stop was at the library, which was being renovated. A Café Coffee Day outlet had sprung up near the Electrical Block. We sure missed this one! A state-of-the-art architecture block near the library, an indoor badminton court near the hostels, an art museum whose roof resembled a temple and a new Research and Development block near the Admin building – these were the additions on campus since we left. The workshop had been remodeled and reminded us of the abusive foundry assistant, the trouble with the hacksaw blades in the fitting section and the friendly smithy guy with the big ‘Veerappan’ moustache. We also recollected our last day at college concluding with the DSP examination.

As hunger overcame us, we vainly hoped that the RVCE canteen would spare us a few morsels. Bad luck…there was barely a soul in the canteen but we still managed to take a walk inside. Those days of sharing a small cup of tea among 5 of us, fighting over a dosa…

And then came along Sanjay with his wife, Keshav, Basava and family and Smitha…More photographs later, it was time to remember our staff…Here’s whom we could recall:

Hemamalini – (Somashekar of Mathematics) – Write it, write it…

TJ – (T Jagadish of Mechanical) – The man who could draw straighter lines on the blackboard than we could with our instruments…the man who taught us Engg Drawing

Suresh of Mathematics – The man who had a feminine voice

Amul Baby – (BK Arun Kumar of Electrical) – The sincere Electrical prof whom we cursed for never giving us a break. Me and Deepu were his favorites, though

Our own TRN – (Narasimha Swamy) – The man with infinite unimplemented ideas

Our own SV – the man who enjoyed those notorious pneumatic equations

Our own Girish – the lecturer who behaved like a student

Unknown name – the man from Kakinada who briefly taught us Material Science and mysteriously disappeared very soon

The lean and mean Kempiah – Princi’s left hand according to his claims, primary responsibilities of checking bus passes and secondary responsibilities of shooing off students from the lawns

Vaali – (Sridevi of Mathematics) – Can’t forget the furor created when she was able to correlate the nickname with herself…Sorry, sorry, sorry

AVM and his obvious favoritism towards the fairer sex

The venerable Chayanna of Physics department – who is now spearheading the ‘Art of Living’ movement in South India

Those infamous quotes associated with Mech professor Mylari Gupta

And who could forget our beloved Suribaby – I am yet to figure out what he meant by ‘sech’ points…and the root ‘lucy’…and his ‘Karamchand’ role at our send-off party at The Club

We tried to list the subjects we studied but without much success…

Famished by now, we moved on to the Country Club. We waited for our other classmates while we settled down. It was also time to wear our new T-Shirts. Surendra had actually been wearing our original T-Shirt all the way, while I carried it in my bag. Ashwin and family and Chacko joined us along with a surprise guest…good old Andy. Then we had a spicy vegetarian buffet lunch over jokes and opinions on our metamorphosis over the years. We also made some last ditch attempts to contact Sanjeev and Rashmi Murthy and coax them into joining this party. Sanjeev excused himself because of visitors at home while Rashmi had a minor injury.

After lunch, we pored over an old collection of college notes proudly preserved by Surendra…Praveen’s carefully researched notes in a nice handwriting, the legendary 50-step pneumatic equation spread over a measly(!) dozen pages, several original-photocopied text book extracts stamped with our own comments…and more. That reminded us of Raghavendra’s tireless efforts to supply the entire class with the piles of photocopies of antiquated textbooks. Then, Surendra also culled out our project report from his bag. That brought back reminiscences of our project guides and our harrowing and hilarious experiences with them.

Most of us had brought the final year industrial tour photographs and that gave us quite something to munch on. How people had changed over the years!!! Smitha, Jayanthi and Ashwin recalled how most of the class made multiple copies of the industrial tour report painstakingly prepared by me, Surendra and Ravikiran. And then that nice dip at the foot of Jog Falls, Chacko’s trip back to our room in Raichur to recover his purse, the hot steaming furnaces at Raichur, the gala bonfire at Shimoga, the gigantic paper mills of Dandeli, the trek through Kemmanagundi to Abbey Falls, the broken sculptures at Hampi, my stomach-ache on our way to Mangalore, lecturer Girish’s constant singing of ‘Shivappa Kayo Thande’ at the rear of the bus, and the last day’s Baazigar dance…

We also had a fun exercise of mapping names to our photographs on our ’94 college magazine. Surprisingly, everyone could map most of the names. Incidentally, our group photo was the only one with lecturers…what an obedient batch of students we were! Our lecturers ought to be proud of us…

Surendra had to leave early for an evening flight to Delhi. We spread out on the lawn and had an elaborate round of introductions on our academic, professional and personal history since our college days. Keshav clicked away to glory on his digital ‘candid camera’. It was quite a revelation when we found out that Chacko – arguably the most notorious in our class – is now bestowed with most number of qualifications against his name. We also deliberated on the utility or futility of our Engineering education. Though only a handful of us have done justice to Instrumentation, we nevertheless cherished the value of our education in the journey of our lives.

It was interesting to note that this reunion brought together most of the remaining few unmarried classmates of our batch – Jayanthi, Smitha, Chacko, Andy…Chacko was at his entertaining best as he shared his experiences of bride hunting on this visit to India and vigorously campaigned his credentials with Jayanthi (The most recent girl he met was in Infosys!) I can never forget the laughter when Chacko called up Rashmi Murthy and mimicked a KEB lineman about to disconnect their home electricity connection. It took Rashmi quite a while to make out the hoax.

It was late evening when we reassembled in the restaurant for tea. Deepu called us from London and managed to speak to a few friends before the poor connection dropped out. Over tea, I got back to some paperwork…completing the accounting exercise for the party and deciding the contributions from every family. Andy suspected a T-Shirt scam ( but I gracefully let him ‘audit’ the accounts. I collected the money and tallied my accounts, as we prepared to leave. We spent a few minutes in sorrow as we condoled the untimely demise of Keerthi and Subramanya Swamy (Tyson).

We went around the Country Club taking some more photographs along the way. Finally, it was separation time. We agreed to improve the network of the class of ’94, especially those who were not quite connected by email. We unanimously vowed to repeat such reunions at increased frequency. Hopefully, the marriage of the remaining bachelors/spinsters would provide an opportunity in the near future.

We dispersed at 6.30pm with happy faces, a bright rainbow in the sky and a light drizzle. I dropped off Andy, Jayanthi and Smitha and officially closed the ‘Reunion of 2004’.

By the way, it was quite a letdown from Smitha and Jayanthi on the ‘agenda’ for the reunion…Even after we dispersed, the agenda was still ‘hidden’…(  😊