Alumni Home Coming — An Important Life Event

A week back, the batch of 1995 met in their alma mater of IIT Kharagpur, India, for the celebration of their silver jubilee year of graduation. The current students put up a stupendous organization which words fail to explain. The institute invited the previous directors who graced the occasion with their presence and wise words. Almost half the batch participated in the homecoming and lived their association with the institute for almost four years in just 72 hours. All familiar faces of young adults, with just some signs of aging and receding hairlines, everyone pretty much seemed as young as heart as they always were. This article is not about what happened in the event as many news articles have covered it but a debriefing of my personal experience and learnings from such gatherings.

A Brief History in Time

Kharagpur is a small town two hours from the nearest metro city Kolkata in the eastern part of India. Other than boasting the longest railway platform and largest railway junction, the township is fairly limited in terms of its offerings to the surroundings. Thus, no student ever connects enough to the city per se. The IIT campus is a sprawling 2100 acres area that boasts of its own township and independence from the Kharagpur city in many ways. With about 20 hostels on the campus, the halls of residence (halls) as they are called, provide a full-fledged social, cultural, and academic environment for the inmates to build little worlds of their own. They build differentiated positioning against other halls and claim a culture of their own that gets passed on generations after generations of inmates. The bonding within the halls is strong yet the competition across the halls can be fierce. In this backdrop, highly talented men and women build their own communities within the halls in various wings (inmates who live in one specific portion of the halls). In some sense, the loyalties are to the wings of the halls where they have learned to grow from boys or girls to men or women in life. A strong association developed for convenience. An essentially unquestioned trust.

My position in my hall was a bit different. I chose to not be part of any specific wing of my batch and lived with final year batches every year. Essentially, built associations are based on purposes or needs than convenience. In some sense, it helped me build associations with many more people but permitted me to keep my sense of independence from group thinking of any specific wing or group. Developing relationships that cut across UG and PG students alike. Also, it gave me ample opportunity to lie low in anonymity and remain an introvert as I always was.

Breaking the Ice

Events of this nature provide an opportunity for people to come together, look for their own little islets of convenience and break the barriers of communication and express themselves to the extent they would as they were when they were young students. While partying within groups serves a need in some sense, does not quite cut across the community at large. Moreover, it’s not even easy for middle-aged adults to break the barriers of finding their associations of convenience unless they are provided enough incentives to connect with people they have not connected with over the years. Luckily, social networking did come in handy. A WhatsApp group was created for this purpose. Though sporadic activity was going on there, there was a need to be reminded or reinforcement of active student life needed to be pumped in to break the barriers of communication. A four-month-long discussion, often talking shop definitely created a sense of need to meet people you have never met over the years. Fear, uncertainty, and doubts clutter midlife rather quickly. The adventures of student life certainly take a backseat. For most people staying abroad or otherwise, comforts of life create barriers in thinking of minor concerns like how to commute from say Kolkata airport to Kharagpur. Once, they formed their groups, it was easy for everyone to come up with their interesting co-passengers, hire private buses to make the trip enjoyable and funfilled. People got down at various stops in between to make it a memorable trip taking photographs or taking general breaks for sightseeing. Some definitely wanted to relive their student day experience, traveled in trains in non-AC compartments as they would do as students, or used cycle rickshaws to reach the IIT campus from railway stations just as they would do eons ago.

Expressions of Purpose

Although alumni wanted to meet for no apparent intention other than to meet their associates of an important part of life, adults always would justify their association to a purpose. Or rather they would connect best when such a purpose is re-established. People would want to express their latent talents, particularly those they had excelled in their younger days to showcase they have not lost the skills they acquired in their student lives or they have continued to nurture those and hone their skills over the past few decades. People would love to participate in often tough sports like football or tennis. Providing platforms for alumni to express their musical, dramatics skills may come in a great way. Often such interests are latent and not expressed explicitly but need to be picked up from discussions in groups, will be laced with pranks. But, it’s worthwhile to read between the lines. Some cajoling and moral and logistic support may be needed to bring everyone on board. Most importantly, cheering your teams while they play, builds confidence and boosts the sentiments. In some ways, every alumnus would like to make a meaningful contribution to the event with their active participation. Letting them make that contribution effectively is crucial to building the perfect event. Every alumni event marks an alumni publication. It’s important to contribute to it and express your views. When the excitement of the interaction will die out, these publications will remind you of the association you had. Some may even stay in memories for many years to come. And looking at your old photographs printed is priceless as well.

Associations of Inconvenience

Growing up is a difficult phase in life. Hostel life is often a self-learning experience and as much as people try to build friendships and associations that go a long way, some associations create discontent and inconveniences. Negative influences create long-lasting images that are hard to erase. Friendly banters sometimes get translated as betrayals, some small inconveniences with people’s actions and communications are blown up as strong emotional barriers; love interests that do not go in the manner intended to lead to seams in relationships that never seem to get healed up. Unfortunately, life is not a movie like Student of the Year where you get to express yourself in one college reunion to even out all differences. People often tend to forget than forgive to move on. It becomes easier to forget as subsequent social relationships have given enough balances to leave them buried where they lie. Alumni events often resurrect such forgotten parts of life. While ideally, one must forgive, it’s always hard. The reason can be, the time is too little to broach a difficult conversation. Forgiving requires relooking into the depth of the past, expressing the emotions from both sides, and evaluating in a matured dialog. Not everyone may be interested in such conversations once the past is buried. The recollection is often colored and imperfect. An alternate approach may be to help one chase his or her purpose during the event overcoming inconveniences. Agreeing to work together is a fair enough indicator of a forgiven past or at least a good enough proxy to create a new meaningful association of purpose.

Winning for All

Institutes establish alumni connect and homecoming for alumni to experience the nostalgia and generate funding opportunities for the institutes. The existing students get an additional event to hone their organization skills. While some students are genuinely interested in helping the alumni get the best-settled experience, some are just using the experience merely to update their resumes. The organizers who genuinely put so much soul into the events must be appreciated for all the additional hard work beyond their academic burdens. The institutes generally invite alumni every year to communicate the need for infrastructure and investments needed to meet the demands of modern education. Every alumnus must get a purpose to rediscover himself or herself or to recreate now vs. then stories to retell it over coffee conversations next few years. And should come up with plans to invest monetarily to the cause of the institute to the best of their abilities.

A Personal Journey

I arrived at the event mostly purposeless but knowing my psyche or frame of mind there was a definite need for me to rebuild associations with the group early and engage with the team over WhatsApp to ascertain my existence. I met many close buddies who I had not met in a quarter of a century but it definitely opened up for me to meet a few special people with who I have not interacted after my first year. Met some new faces whom I had never interacted with but found reasons to be inspired by. The large campus of Kharagpur gave me the avenue to take long walks, and acquired interest over the past decade, while having animated discussions and conversations with a fellow alumnus or two, reach around new parts of the campus, munch on roadside snack counters which we used to do quite often as students. Spent time in the halls of residence talking to the current inmates learning a lot about their lives as I had lunch with them. It was a three-day extravaganza for me to rediscover myself. Of course, nothing is complete as an adult if you do not discuss a few professional experiences and interests with a few fellow alumni and building new associations of purpose. For me, it seemed like a phase to relook at life with a renewed vigor. Hence, an important sojourn in the journey of life.