Retro does Speak ...

It's been quite sometime since my last post came up, and today's post is gonna be about the reason for this long time-gap. I had been, for the last couple of weeks, keeping myself a bit busy with something called 'Retrospeakt '08' (refer picture for clarifications). It was a project that a group of ex-students from my school (M.P Birla Foundation H.S School) took up -- forming an alumni association, and organizing it's first ever re-union.

Now for the non MPB'ites -- our school ex students had always expressed the desire for getting an Alumni association going, but that desire has been 'Garfielded' (if you know what I mean :P ). So for this (and some other reasons) somehow the mobilization of all the 14 batches of pass outs had not happened all this while. A couple of months ago ... some enthusiastic people said 'Enough is enough' and decided to take it up on themselves to set the ball rolling. Along came a widely networked campaign for the alumni association -- Orkut, Facebook, Gmail, Gtalk, Yahoo ... you name it, they were in the list. A database was created (yours truly stepped in to the action :) ), and thereafter, contacts started pouring in. After meetings and discussions, an association was finally formed, and the first re-union was conceived. So far so good.

It was end of May when I got to see what was going on in full detail, and the re-union was planned for 29th of June -- in a scale that really needed quite a lot of planning and labor. In came a truly strenuous week of incessant toil -- sponsors, publicity, legal agenda, event planning, fund-raising from alumni ... a huge list. From my little experience, I knew how hard it was going to be for all of us but everyone seemed to be positive about it. What followed thereafter was a series of obstacles that showed how Murphy's law does rule over everything. Sponsors decided to be procrastinating their replies, some said yes but thereafter said 'We are sorry', one ex-student decided to jump in with his contributions only to tell that we have to run the entire event as per his whims (we obviously called him off), it started raining and the school grounds (the planned venue) was out of bounds so we had to shift it inside the hall, people were not very forthcoming with contributions, the media people started behaving as they always do (in fact even worse than they always do) -- in total ... the work of a team of 15 was being done by 5 and we had to see it all go astray every morning. Some things did click however, and the day of the event arrived.


They say honest effort pays all the time. What we saw on 29th was nothing less than testimony to this old adage. Ex-students came in huge numbers, the total amount collected as donations was thousands of bucks greater than the collection throughout June, the good old assembly hall was decked up beyond recognition, people ate to their heart's content, good music, gathering, great fun -- in short an evening to remember.


So what if the badges on our shirts read "Alumini Association", so what if sponsors chose not to pay us because we "had no promise as a group", so what if people had not been forthcoming till the very end, so what if the teachers whom we loved and invited chose not to come, so what if a section of the ex-students did not believe that the people working for the event were not "good enough" -- for all of these, The M.P Birla Alumni Association has it's own legal registration as an independent body, we've got fixed agenda and policies (and they look really stud, believe me), we have our own logo and header, we have our own magazine, we have even our own website ready for launch, and we had hundreds of ex-students say "Dude ... an evening to remember".

On a personal front, it was after a really long time that I got to meet my school friends, it was the first time I saw my brother dance on stage (he does it well indeed), it was yet another successful stint for me at organizing an event, it was yet another magazine that I helped bring out -- but most of all it was a simply brilliant feeling to stand in front of the stage that day, swaying to the music played by one of my friends, and feeling at home at the very place you kinda stopped calling home about 4 years ago.

Here's to "The M.P Birla Alumni Association" and to "Retrospeakt".