Catching up.......!

(From left to right: Sethu, Aravind, Ragu & Jeevan)

Jeevan had been the catalyst for this whole reunion thingy. He had been in the US since the 90s and had returned after a lapse of 12 years. I suppose he had been the live wire among his cousins for them to organize this gathering. He was in the same age group as my nephews but I had the opportunity to play host to him once or twice in the early 90s when I was in Kulim and he would drop by often to visit my nephew. I had wanted to visit him for the past 2 weeks but somehow I just couldn’t find the time. I had been told that he was on a short visit but when I heard that he was due to return the next morning, I realized how fast time flies. It was an anti-climax of sorts when he came up to greet me; I couldn’t quite place him. For one, he spotted the bald look now and he has grown taller too with a much more robust figure then 20 years ago. I felt a little embarrassed at not being able to recognize him initially. We spoke of his younger days and his jaunts for a while.

His uncle Ragu who had recently returned from Australia that he now calls home, was also there. I’m not too sure what the trick is but he looks exactly how he was the last time I saw him in 1982. Could it be the not so punishing climate there…….I wonder? Surprisingly, he doesn’t appear to have aged one bit. Having lived down under for such a long time, I would have expected him to speak with the now all too familiar Aussie slang but no……he doesn’t have that either. Understandably, his kids speak that way having been raised in the foreign land for most of their lives but not him. He is still as modest as he was when he lived here and has not adopted any of those objectionable and sometimes even annoying traits or characteristics whatsoever. What a relieve! We spoke at length of our present and even had time to catch up with some of our past, promising to meet up again sometime soon.

Sethu was the other person I caught up with during the party. No…he is not from overseas. He lives in KL and we have known each other since I was 14. I tried many a time to meet up with him but somehow we couldn’t. On each of the occasions when I tried on almost all my visits to JB where he was working in the 90s, he had been busy and unable to make it. Being 3 years older to me, I learnt a lot about the birds and the bees during my transition to adulthood. He just about knew of all those things and I used to hang around with him often, once personally becoming a witness to his exploits or escapade. But we owe no one any apology as we were young then and ………….being young I suppose entitled us to be experimental. How else are we to learn or for that matter even grow, in the truest sense of the word? It had been 28 years since I last met him. He had lost much of his boyish looks and now projects an intellectual appearance with gold-rimmed glasses to match. We caught up with some old stories over a couple of pegs. Although the session was tempting, I couldn’t stay longer and left by 11 that night as I was working the next morning.