FIFTY YEARS AND BEYOND
I waited for the day, as a child waits for his birthday celebrations. Restless, anxious yet collected. I’m not a child but a retired grandfather. The expected special event – the golden jubilee celebration of schoolmates – of die-hard friendship, of fifty years since childhood, a sweet collection of bonding and memories. For me, no other gala could be as intimate as the one I’ve been waiting for: this get-together.
Sixteen souls carrying five decades of shared warmth, gently ageing, a closely knit group landed on the windswept sea-shore Resort of Bheemili, in Vizag. It’s going to be a two-day affair. Strangely, I heard, while climbing the steps of the lodging, the waves distantly carried the roars of our laughers with the same innocent rhythm I remembered from years spent on the playgrounds of Nirmala High School. With the same youthful cheers, today, we are all here —older, slower, but softer with decades of sage experience.
You can’t expect, though laden with hardships, wit and wisdom, after five decades, a display of playful frolic of friendship to be quiet and sober. No, not at all, you see, our case is different. We moved as a crowd, as if we were a gang, laughing in an unrestrained, loud, playful pitch at some silly jokes. Our combined voices, short of a sudden commotion, rose at once, without bothering to explain a thing to anyone watching us who seemed little surprised at our decent lack of concern.
Though the sea breeze, the white surfing waves, and the fading light took a brief pause, our noisy liveliness and sparkle didn’t. The early morning strolls, the rush for selfies, and the intimate chatter at breakfast, the late evening attempts to dance, these were the fragments of precious moments for all of us – a strong sentimental shelter, under which we are rejoicing now, and that we believe the musings will be with us wherever we may go.
The serene sea-facing resort has been cooperative enough to encourage and tolerate our playful pranks and silly games. We were so relaxedly unruly, so leisurely chatting as a mob, unconcerned beyond our aim to seam our fifty years of “we’ll always stay friends” theme.
As we watched the sunset, later at dinner time, we exchanged a few thoughts, our past, our families’ issues – about how fast life moves, how much we’ve weathered, and how lucky we are that after all these years, we can still find time and our way back to each other.
The years may have added wrinkles, aches, and emotional burdens, but they’ve also given us a deeper gratitude for moments like this—the nearness of good old friends, the whistle of ocean breeze, looking back on the childhood memories, and the quiet comfort of knowing some nostalgic feelings that bonds don’t fade; they only grow richer with age.
