Dec 16, 2024

 After some deliberation, I decided to go for this trip. It was an annual ritual for a few years now and it was beginning to get a bit jaded. Atul and I both had some initial reservations about making this trip. For me, I just did not want to sacrifice a weekend with the family in Dubai for the trip to Goa. I had done enough travel this year for both personal and business purposes, and I think the quota for another personal trip had run out for me. I did not have a big problem with the humdrum agenda of this trip- I was happy to do more of the same. Surely, it would not be as exciting as the early ones when there was a lot of catching up and getting to know ourselves involved. But that is a natural outcome of these things- nothing is as exciting as it is the first time. But perhaps the idea is not to drop it just because it gets boring- debatable as this is not as significant an event as, say, a marriage. In any case, I managed to combine the trip with a bona fide business trip to Bangalore- so atleast I was not much out of pocket for the travel expense to Goa. Atul had other views. He wanted me to travel with him and when he learnt that I was not going to, because I would travel for work- he cancelled his plans to travel. The reality is that he had some other business travel but since he is a highly successful entrepreneur, it could be argued that he was the master of his domain- atleast in terms of time. The fact is that he did not want to have the same experience again- it was, amongst other things, a bit low-budget for him. Now that he was a rich man, he wanted a better experience. But this was not shared obviously by others in the group who could not justify additional expense just to live it larger. And herein began the first cracks for what had now been a successful reunion of a small coterie of school friends. True to a stereotype, a reunion usually is a vehicle to signal how successful someone is. In particular, it is a chance for those in the class who were not regarded as academic A-listers but who have defied the odds to get success, to rub that in. This a deeply psychological reaction to a society that tends to only regard those kids who are the top of their class and who have managed to get into good universities. while invisible-ising the rest. For a kid who is thus ignored, normal life is hard. And ever so often, this type of atmospheric snubbing can prod them on to pursue something with a raging passion- almost just to get even with the universe for such a slight. These types of folks, then, form the nucleii of any re-union. One sees this in movies wherein someone who was overweight has now shed it all and looks attractive. Boy, does he or she want to go to a high school reunion or what?  I am certain there was some of that even in the reunion group that was formed in our case. However, what had been refreshing early on is that it never came to a discussion about personal success. It was simply a good time with conversations that were unrelated to and uninvoked by one's personal success or wealth. This is what then egged me on, and I am sure others, to the next one and so on.  But now, there was beginning to form the vestiges of a division based on economic lines, wherein a part of the crew wanted something more, but the rest didn't. This was my analysis prior to making this trip. Now we need to discuss how I felt post the trip.

One of us was quite visibly disengaged throughout the trip. This is the person who usually used his good offices to get us reservations to Goa hot-spots, book transport for us, and last time even managed to get an acoustic guitar for me for a couple of days. This time around, he did not wish to do much and left it to the rest- which was a terrible idea because the rest did not know what to do or where to go so we ended up spending a lot of time "drifting". Fortunately for me, this is something I am patently used to- being the lazy traveler that I am. I didn't really care if we wasted the entire time not doing anything at all- so the bar for me was very low. Not so much for others. The women in the group were particularly not amused with the lack of interest shown by this one person. The person in fact confided in me more than once, that this time it was a bit of a drag for him. I sympathized with him- and partially was in agreement as well. But not because we weren't going anywhere fun. It was simply because we had run out of juice. The old familiar jokes did not work anymore, I lost the verve to pontificate about important topics (something that had provided entertainment and, dare I say, also some useful perspective earlier. In fact, it led to me being labelled "Prof"). But the Prof was out of material for writing yet another paper. Now a good Prof would be able to recycle and cobble something together for yet another academic submission, but I guess I was not that kind of Prof. The usual banter was also non-existent. In fact, there was one photograph that pretty much summed it up for all 8 of us. 5 of us in 3 sofas in the living room each staring at our phones. The end was nigh.

So the only question is- will we do it again? Would it help if we changed things around? Maybe Goa has outlived its usefulness as both a location and a format. Additionally, we could invite new people to join in this reunion group. Both are not fraught without difficulty. Additional formats become logistical challenges for the short duration of these trips. Additional members are unlikely to get the same degree of approval by each one of us. We have year to find out how things will pan out. Until then, on with our normal lives.