A smaller world?

It is often said that "it is a small world." While there have been happenings time and again throughout my life that have reminded me of this phrase, I have to say that 2007 was an year where the phrase has meant a lot to me.

2007 was a good year for many reasons but for me one of the biggest reasons was the fact that I really reconnected with my past. In July, I decided to attend an event called the Pan-IIT Conference, which was held in Santa Clara, California. It turned out to be a great event with several thousand graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology from all over the world with graduation years ranging from the 1960's to the current decade. We all enjoyed listening to high profile folks like Jeffrey Immelt, Arun Sarin and Javed Akhtar etc. To me, the greatest joy was to meet fellow batch mates from the IIT Kanpur class of 1987. I got to see friends who I had not seen in 20 years and the reunion was very special to me. We made it a point to get together every evening during the conference at a local friend's place. It felt very nostalgic to be with them. It was nice to meet their families who are all very hospitable. On the one hand we have all changed but in many ways we are still very much the same.

This conference also gave me the push to do more to stay connected with friends and I hope that I will continue to be more involved in this effort. I also had the opportunity to meet many other close friends from college many of whom have gone to achieve great things in life like resolving a long-standing open problem in Computer Science about prime numbers (Prof. Manindra Agrawal). Meeting professors who taught me during my college days (and two of them namely Prof. Dhande and Prof. Barua are now directors at two of the IITs) was quite an honor as well.

I am on a mailing list established by some alumni from my high school. Last year, my high school held a felicitation event for retired teachers. I received an email with pictures from that event. I had tears in my eyes as all the teachers who were honored had taught me one time or another between 3rd grade and 10th grade. Most of them are in their seventies and eighties and it was shocking to see how they have aged. I have probably not seen any of them for at least 25 years. I am hoping that I can establish contact with a few of them. That would be very special.

I hope the world continues to get smaller for me in 2008.