Anusmaran 2007 - Mumbai !!!

This piece is about the Anusmaran 07 happenings in Mumbai reported by your humble reporter Amit Gokhale for Alam News !!!!! ;-)

Anusmaran this year was held at the Taj President Hotel in Cuffe Parade !!!.. Quite literally one end of town, but was a good place nevertheless... decent-sized hall and plus a lobby outside and a different hall for dinner. For once in Mumbai, space was not a constraint !!

I walked in at around 7.45 pm to see, as expected, a pretty empty hall. Still felt great to see some batchmates at that early hour as well. Spotted first were Dabas ,Andy Krishnamurthy, God (Maruti Srinivas Kumar). The met our junior Nikhil Gurjar who went on about his globe trotting ways (fancy any IIM grad landing in Venezuela :-))..Slowly but surely, the crowd started trickling in. By around 8.30 pm, people were pretty much in place. Prof. Ashok Thampy was in attendance, and took us through a standard PPT about whats going on at the Institute. Interestingly, there was no mention of 'quota','OBC' etc in the entire PPT and absolutely no CP, unlike in Chennai. On an interesting note for Supply Chain and Operations proffessionals like me, IIMB has started a centre for Supply Chain Management headed by Prof. Janat Shah. Do login to the site for more details. Then, as at other places, a recorded by speech by Prof. Apte and the alumni chairperson (Mr. Basu, was it ?) followed. As is to be expected, during these speeches, the action was happening more at the bar at the other end of the hall ;-))..

There was quite a decent turnout from our batch. Besides Dabas and Andy, the list of attendees includes (in no specific order): XL Goel *(roll. no. 1 as always:), Amit Garga *, Ameya Shenoy *, Ganny, Nitin Agarwal, Govind Agarwal, Pansari*, Sacheendran*, Kiran Agarwal, Prom, G, Indrani, KC, Pati, Dola Kumar, Shanky, Shirish Shenoy, KK, AKG and many more (apologies to those whom I may not have mentioned). Infact, the turnout was much better than last time inspite of the Anusmaran announcement and the venue information reaching people quite late in the day. (Note: the * against the name indicates people who had come with their better halves, I too belong to the list).

Then, the chit-chat happened. Felt good to hear the latest about friends, many of whom were meeting each other for the first time since campus. Our very own Abhishek 'crib' Pati is soon to find a patni of his own. Hopefully the cribs will come down !!!.. XL was spotted constantly sneaking out of the hall for a puff in order to escape the gaze of his wife ;-)... but, as they say, you are never far from your wife's roving eye and poor soul was almost caught once.. We tried calling Alam then, but did not get through. And speaking of wives, they had formed their own small group and were chatting away like long-lost friends much to the relief of their husbands, who could quietly sneak away to the bar for the next peg or meet up with other ladies ;-).. Most of the guys would now be in their 3rd job since campus !! I was amongst the very small minority who are still loyally serving their campus recruiters (in fact, I was met with disbelieving looks on telling people that I am still with Asian Paints :).

By around 9.30 pm the bar was overflowing with enthusiasts wanting their Smirnoff, Beer, Whisky (dont remember which brand since I stuck to Smirnoff) or just plain Coke. Also, the dance floor was open by then. But naturally, a mini L^2 started. Some of today's chart-busters and the smash hits of our times combined to create, once more, the Saturday night atmosphere. The highlight of the dance floor was, undoubtedly, our beloved 'Maaeri' (Euphoria) wherein everyone instinctively sat around in circles as if in a trance (much to amusement of the wives ;-).. All in all, felt great to jive one more time in the company of near and dear ones.
This went on much until midnight (again, in contrast to Anusmaran 06 which was held outdoors and hence, had to be wound up by 11pm).

After having dinner, we finally departed by around midnight with the memories of a great evening with friends. Infact, we can still have unofficial get-togethers like this twice a year probably. Wot say ?

cheers
Amit