For Ol’ Times’ Sake
Last week, I attended a get-together of former colleagues from the Times of India Hyderabad office. For me, and many of us, it had been more than two decades since we had last worked together. The day had all the ingredients of a good reunion—food, music, drinks, laughter, and the slightly awkward but warm ritual of rediscovering faces that had once been part of everyday life.
The event had been wonderfully organised by a group of enthusiastic volunteers (Murthy Vadapalli, Ranjana Rudra, Suresh Kochattil, Navneet Mathur Padmini Kashyap and many others) who had put in the effort to track people down, coordinate schedules, and make the day happen. And judging by the smiles, the hugs, and the decibel levels in the room, their effort had clearly paid off. A big shout out to all the amazing folks!
As I wandered around the venue reconnecting with people from my past, it struck me that most of us were not there merely because an invitation had been sent. We were there because of something deeper.
The event itself was tagged as “Jab We Met.” But as the evening unfolded, I felt a more appropriate title might have been “For Ol’ Times’ Sake.” … not just for the wordplay :)…but the phrase captures something important about why we show up at such gatherings.
Because when we meet former colleagues after many years, we are not just meeting people.....We are meeting younger versions of ourselves.
At one point in time, we were all in the same boat. Young(er), hopeful, uncertain, trying to prove ourselves, figuring out careers and life at the same time. We were co-travellers in a journey whose destination none of us could quite see then.
A reunion is a chance to see where that journey has taken everyone.
Some stayed within the same industry, becoming veterans of the field we once entered as novices. Some moved into entirely different worlds. Some have done remarkably well for themselves, climbing ladders that perhaps did not even exist when we worked together. And some, unfortunately, seemed to have had a harder ride.
In quiet ways, reunions become moments of measurement—not in the competitive sense we associate with youth, but in a gentler, more reflective way. A kind of life yardstick. Where did the road take you? Where did it take me? Part curiosity, part introspection.
But perhaps the deeper reason lies elsewhere.
As we grow older, the currency with which the world values us slowly changes. When we are young, it is energy and speed that matter. Later in life, it becomes experience. And experience, unlike energy, cannot be displayed in real time. It is stored in memory.
“Hey, do you remember…?”, Guess my name!”, “Remember that time when…?”
All around the room, fragments of the past floated through the air like familiar tunes. A joke from a long-forgotten meeting. A boss’s favourite phrase. A story about a deadline that once seemed like the end of the world.
Memory, it turns out, is a social activity. Alone, we remember imperfectly. Together, we reconstruct.
Someone recalls a detail we had forgotten. Someone else reminds us of the punchline. And suddenly an entire moment from twenty-five years ago springs back to life. Perhaps that is what reunions really are: small acts of collective archaeology. We dig through the hallowed ground of time and each one rediscover pieces that once we put together…we get a pottery of the person we once were.
This rediscover leads to something reassuring that even though life has taken each of us down different roads, there remains a stretch of the journey that belongs to all of us equally.
For a few years of our lives, we were colleagues. But for one evening again, we were simply co-travellers revisiting a shared past.
And perhaps that is why we gather….not just for the food, music, or nostalgia.
But for ol’ times’ sake.
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