Karnatak High School Reunion: The Se7en Pals

February 07, 2006. By around 2045 IST, seven people meet. A decade ago, in 1995, these folk had completed their schooling from an institute by the name Karnatak High School (KHS). Another decade ago, around 1985, some of them had begun their education from here. Some joined later. Nevertheless, today was the day when these chaps (yours truly included) decided to meet and get nostalgic.

Atul Nulkar, who presently resides in Colorado, is back home after 3 long years. Among other plans, he has a wish to catch up with school folk, an idea that he triggers off well before he leaves US for Pune. Not many respond. Naturally, not many were expected. After calling up those who could possibly make it, the quorum of 7 includes:

1. Atul Nulkar (from Pune, presently in Colorado)
2. Ashish Joshi (Pune)
3. Shantanu Gogate (Pune)*
4. Aaswad Kulkarni (Pune)
5. Sarika Joshi (Pune)
6. Adarsh Padmanabhan (Pune)
7. Aniket Anikhindi (Pune)

* used to attend Morning Shift in KHS, all others Afternoon Shift.

Gitanjali was about to attend but was unwell :( and Madhura was suddenly uncontactable for 2 odd days. Pritam Paithankar had deadline problems, Mithun Wali had to work through the night. Rahul Deshpande had, as usual, some singing to do (He's a big shot in Pune by now). That's about those who could probably have made it, but missed it anyways.

Folk in the image below (LtoR):
Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate

The initial meeting place was Hotel Vaishali. Sarika had postponed the meeting time from 2000 hrs to 2030 hrs. We decided to have dinner at Hotel Surya, a pretty close by place. And we walked down to realise that Hotel Surya was demolished and a new building had been erected there. After Sarika arrived, people made a fuss about where to go next (these things never stop I guess). We ultimately managed to finalise on Bamboo House.

People were not really interested in food or anything else, getting nostalgic was the idea and so it happened. With the irritating waiter around, we had to ensure that we would give the hotel enough business for occupying a table during prime time. Kingfisher Strong for some, soup for some. And recollecting the (g)old events, idiosyncrasies of teachers as well as pals, h(z)eroic deeds etcetera were recalled.

Some prominent memories:

* Chinmay Pawaskar was remembered for reading batlaakar (Hindi for telling) as balaatkar (Hindi for rape) thrice in a row in a Hindi class.

* In a Marathi class, the teacher wanted students to tell words ending with khor. Ashish Joshi was ready with darodekhor (Marathi for dacoits) but before he could say it, someone else mentioned that. And when he had to say his word, he promptly said haramkhor (Marathi for rascal). The teacher got furious, but then Ashish was happy that his turn was over.

* Confession books (slam books) were confiscated for reasons still unknown to us. There used to be a "dated till..." value to be filled by everyone who filled confession books. Rohan Pandhare had, in his style, written "dated till Datta Madam stops scolding". And Datta Madam read out the very same thing in class, leaving us all in splits.

* Most of the guys recollected that Tejaswini Patwardhan was popular as a Madhuri Dixit look alike.

* Ravindra Kulkarni was remembered for his powerful cricketing shots and bowling, Prasenjit Pathak for his typical ways.

* Rajendra Joshi, the Physical Training (PT) as well as Marathi teacher, was recollected for his erratic ways. He had once thrown a duster at me, I ducked and Kranti was hit on her forehead. Arvind Paranjape, the Drawing teacher was recollected too since he used to beat up kids who did not do their homework. Gauri Chavan ma'am was remembered mainly because she was such a babe.

* My typicality of blinking eyes was recollected, and Chandrika Kulkarni madam thought that I was having convulsions when I blinked eyes in the way I used to. She advised that I should go home, and I promptly did (taking advantage of the situation :) ). And this was in class 3 :-D

The reunion also had an intro session - everybody just gave a brief up on the previous decade - basically after completing school.


Folks in the image above (LtoR):
Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate, Aaswad Kulkarni, Sarika Joshi, Adarsh Padmanabhan.

Sarika started getting fussy about a cat who was moving around the table. She supposedly hates cats, quote unquote "I can live with a cat around as long as she sits in peace and lets me live in peace". What on earth was that roaming cat going to do to someone like Sarika? The cat would have to be utterly crazy. In the process, Sarika managed to irritate most of us, leaving her chair many times, mentioning it googol times that she can't stand a cat. She was lucky to be amongst a set of tolerant people ;-)

We decided to have paan at Portico on JM Road. Adarsh did not spare a single chance of clicking photographs, and it made sense too, after all, having a digital camera with capacity enough to click hundreds of photographs, if one doesn't, then it's a waste of a camera. I can't possibly put in all 30-odd images here..

Pals since Junior KG (LtoR): Aniket Anikhindi, Ashish Joshi
















Da boys..(LtoR): Atul Nulkar, Ashish Joshi, Shantanu Gogate,
Adarsh Padmanabhan, Aaswad Kulkarni, Aniket Anikhindi.















Memories, memories and more memories.. Let's hope we have more crowd for the next reunion.