Posts Tagged ‘alumni’

Full marks to you for persistence. Honestly, with the hectic schedule that I have these days – I can hardly get down to checking my mail. I thought this sabbatical will give me some free time to do some personal stuff but this is just not happening. After your “n”th reminder I thought I should open my account.
With all my traveling I think the theme of my posts will be the Johnites I meet on the road – with the intention of informing our students what the alumni have ended up doing. Let me warn you guys there will be a lot of “those were the days…”!
So let me start with my latest encounter – Dr. Rony Mathew at Ernakulam.
Rony is from the Bo83 – a year my senior. President of the Student’s Union for the year 1985-86. I took over from him the next year. My memories of Rony go back to the rivalry that his batch and ours had during the late 1980s. Those were the days (there I go) when all the able-bodied men would be found on the hockey or football field every evening – and we have had our share of encounters there. But there was more incidents in the cultural arena – naturally immediate seniors cannot stand the thought of losing to their juniors.
But all this is forgotten once you leave St. John’s. I remember going to Bombay in January 1994 (four years after I last met Rony) and he came all the way out to my classmate’s residence in the KEM Hostel just to chat and catch up with old times. That’s one lesson – no matter where you go Johnites will hunt each other down just to relive the old days.
Rony is now the much sought-after Chief Cardiologist at Ernakulam’s Lissie Hospital. I had to go and see him because he was treating two of my relatives. The crowd outside his evening OPD was humongous – I took the liberty of walking right in and discussing my relatives’ cases. I had to do that because when we used the normal channels to get an appointment we were told that the earliest we could get to meet Rony would be May 2010!! Even, Devi Shetty at NH is not so busy!
At the end of the day, it’s guys like these who make you proud to be a Johnite! Am traveling to Delhi this weekend – wonder who I will run into.