Reunions have been the trend for many decades. Especially college reunions. Even 70+ batchmates turn up in good numbers for their golden reunion, as enthusiastically as they did for the silver jubilee meet. The only difference is that given their advancing age and health, spouses accompany them. No longer with the intention of keeping them out of mischief but to ensure they do not trip and fall and take their medicines on time.
The years simply fall off them and the goofiness of college days returns. They may be meeting hostel-mates after 50 years, but can immediately invoke proprietary rudeness and backslap them, as though they had met every day these past years. But these college reunions are not the story I am going after. What I turn my attention to is the more recently popular reunions of ex-colleagues from organisations where they had worked together.
Given how busy people are with their careers and family responsibilities, these kind of physical gatherings are extremely difficult for working professionals. WhatsApp very admirably –and with the video conferencing facility – fills this need. However, for folks who have retired from active professional careers, these reunions are a wonderful way to reconnect and relive old memories. Quite different from the times of our fathers. My father retired on 28 February 1981 and seamlessly and comfortably moved from a suit to a dhoti–banian next morning. He would occasionally write and receive postcards from a handful of colleagues who had become close friends.
Anyway, these days, retired professionals seem to have discovered a taste for old organisational reunions. There is no periodicity; it can be two meetings in three months and never again; some are better organised and even do out-of-town meetings occasionally. Some groups I know are suddenly meeting up almost 20 years after they went their own way after working together.
And here kicks in the difference between college reunions and the reunions of colleagues who worked together. College batchmates have a unique bond – of brotherhood, shared classrooms, fun, exams, mischief, and hostel revelry. Office reunions are not always a meeting of equals. When peer groups meet (say managers, sales teams, or service teams) they land together in a similar socio-economic plateau. The competitiveness has faded; they are comfortable in their own skins and have made peace with the way their careers unfolded and only memories of good times at work remain. So, peer reunions are filled with good cheer and the occasional banter targeted at the boss. Moreover, the costs of such get togethers are what each of them can afford, so no worries there.
But when an ‘all members’ reunion is organised, the situation can be quite different. This was driven home to me by a recent set of meetings organised in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi by ex-members of an organisation where we had spent many years. Though I could not attend these meetings, I received nice reports from colleagues.
These ‘all-members’ meetings raised a fundamental issue, a troubling issue of principle. The reunion of the Bengaluru colleagues was the classic idli-dosa-vada-coffee meeting at ₹400 per head, in a nice open-air restaurant that provides a pleasing ambience for relaxed gatherings. However, both at Mumbai and Delhi, the reunions were elaborate ‘dinner plus drinks’ affairs. Nothing strange or wrong, but the venue and the choice of liquor, meant that each person forked out around ₹3,000 in Mumbai and over ₹4,000 in Delhi. When I heard the costs of the Mumbai and Delhi meetings, my old fashioned, stuck-in-the 1990s heart was troubled. I felt there would have been some colleagues not so well off;some may have pressing financial responsibilities; maybe they have not built a retirement nest egg like the others. Were such colleagues able to afford this?
Decades ago in that same organisation, when some colleague’s (or sibling’s) wedding would come up, our office accountant would send a register across to every member for contribution to buy a gift. Conventionally, it would begin with the chief who in the ‘thakur khush hua’ style, gave an expansive contribution. That would trigger among the others, the very human response of ‘I must also give something in the same range.’ Being a smallish office where everyone participated in everything, it was a torture to see some of our colleagues with smaller salaries struggle to write a number that in their minds did not hurt self-esteem. After two such events, I decided to turn the thing upside down. From then on, I made sure the register first came to me (I was the second-in-command there) and I would write a small contribution. I explained to some key colleagues the reason I did that. Everyone followed suit and I could see the relief in the eyes of my less salaried colleagues.
After these recent reunions, I voiced my concerns with some ex-colleagues who were also close friends: Can not the undeniable joy of reunions of colleagues where each one renews friendships, relives happy memories, and enjoys an evening of gaiety be achieved with a more affordable programme for all members and without ostentation? The responses I received were swift. One chided me for being a stick-in-the-mud. A kinder soul tried to assuage by saying that one person at one of these meetings – he was also a former regional boss – offered to pay the bill for the entire group. Probably, a well-meaning gesture to ensure less affluent colleagues need not fork out a steep amount but I wondered if such a move diluted the spirit of a meeting of equals and brought an unnecessary sense of obligation. One friend, brutally silenced me, saying the attendance at Mumbai and Delhi was much higher than Bengaluru, throwing my cost argument out of the window.
Thankfully, I am at an age where I can be at ease with unresolved questions and the best way forward is to let my hair down when my BITS batchmates meet in a few weeks. Anyway, it will be an evening that will cost a fraction of the Mumbai and Delhi meetings.
S Giridhar is one of the earliest members of Azim Premji Foundation
Published on April 27, 2026
