My friend John and his wife had gone to the Atlas school reunion dinner. John had finished high school in 1964 and he was attending the school reunion dinner for the first time after 35 years. John had joined the Dufferin Navy Training Ship and, on graduation, he joined the merchant navy. He had been a captain with various shipping companies in India and abroad and, post-retirement, had settled in a Bombay suburb.
He was most disappointed with the reunion dinner. The food was average; the music was too loud; the crowd was too large for the space available; and he did not meet any interesting people. I asked John what he meant by ‘interesting’. Were there no ‘old boys’ who were in school at the same time as him—the class of 1964, give or take a few years? Yes, there were some. But there was nothing that John had in common with them. He was neither happy nor unhappy to meet them. And he was not particularly keen on meeting any one of them again.
John had perhaps been looking for some of his classmates of 35 years ago, who had progressed in similar fashion; who had a similar lifestyle; whose wives would get on with his wife - and who would therefore share a certain commonality with him alone and, preferably, with them as a couple. This happens only rarely. Therefore, John was chasing a shadow. And he was quite rightly disappointed. He decided never to attend a school reunion dinner again.
It was a few years after we got married. My wife chanced upon a meeting with an old college friend of hers, somewhere in town. Meena was my wife’s roommate in the college hostel and my wife was very happy to have met her after a gap of many years. Meena was not married; had a high-profile job in a large corporation; lived in her own apartment; and had her family in Nagpur.
My wife invited Meena to spend an evening at our home and, in order to save her the trouble of going back home late in the evening, also suggested that she spend the night and go after breakfast the next morning.
The evening started on a pleasant enough note. We had dinner and, as we finished, the conversation began to flag. I thought that my wife and Meena would have a lot to talk about, especially since they had been roommates and had met after so many years.
But they did not.
Each realised that they had gone in different directions and they no longer struck any chord of commonality. We retired early that night. Meena left the next morning and we have not seen her since—which is 20 years ago!
Jack was in college with me. We were both in the BSc class doing chemistry major and we both lived in the same neighbourhood. Jack was a good violinist—his passion was music; he was a bon vivant. The result- he missed many classes and even some sessions of practicals and, consequently, he depended heavily on me for my notes and updating to make up for what he had missed.
Having managed to get through with a second class at the BSc, Jack went to the US to do a Masters and I never saw him again for a long time. Thirty years after we graduated, he was in India with his Brazilian wife, visiting the home country. It was after such a long time and the first time for his wife. I was invited to dinner at a common friend’s home to meet Jack. I readily accepted, because I was looking forward to meeting Jack again (after all, I was his alter ego in college) and to meeting his wife for the first time.
When we went to dinner, I regretted that I had accepted. Jack was distant, his wife was aloof. We did not go beyond exchanging a few pleasantries and, try as I might, I just could not get through. We had moved too firmly in different directions to be able to cling to the threads of the past. I will not miss Jack for the next 30 years!
When we went to Goa on a holiday a few years ago, I met two old friends who I had known in the corporate world 20 years ago, who were good friends at that time and who, at the end of fairly successful careers, had now retired in Goa. We met a couple of times, and we all knew the time had changed for all of us. They had retired, lived on pensions and investments; went for morning walks and took many assorted tablets; and took pride in continuously talking about the achievements of their children.
I was still riding the horse; concerned about my own achievements rather than living through my children; mercifully still protected against the inevitable avalanche of tablets for digestion and backache. We could understand each other.
We were mature enough to ‘strike empathy’, and look at subjects from the others’ point of view. But we had no real ‘communis’- which is ‘sharing’ the here and now in a fully committed togetherness.
As we journey through life along the corporate path, sometimes higher, sometimes winding and longer, we necessarily have to accept that acquaintances in our past neighbourhood, schools, colleges, companies and assignments will go their own different ways.
You or they will achieve different social levels, go in different career directions, develop different family structures; and develop different interests.
Time takes a toll on all of us.
If we are left with a residue of 5% of those we knew well from the class of 1964, we must consider ourselves very lucky.
For the rest, it is a kaleidoscope. Some of your closest friends in 1964, have got distant. We need to accept this without rancour for those who were our old friends.
And we need to accept that “should old acquaintance be forgot,” is more than just a refrain that occurs in ‘Auld Lang Syne’, however cold and cruel this may seem.
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
One must remain proactive. Learn new skills.