Chennai :
Not enough 60-year-olds are on Facebook. This is probably why the folks behind the reunion of the Economics batch of 1976, Loyola College had to request a ‘special op’ be carried out to track down their classmates.
Members of the alumni committee, who have diligently tracked down every one of their 76 classmates, did so over a span of two years. Gerald Arputhasamy, one of the alumni and co-ordinator of the event over the weekend, recalled, “We have called offices, wives, postmen, even rang up the United Nations once to reach a classmate of our who works with the World Trade Organisation!”
Sadly what they found was that 40 years after college graduation, nine classmates were deceased and several others – spread all across from Sowcarpet to Singapore – were unreachable.
That’s when Gerald requested classmate and friend, retired Commissioner of Police T Rajendran to help out. And as you can imagine, returning home from work to find out that cops had come knocking, alarmed more than one senior gent in the process. “We had quite a few people scared, before they called back and I got to say: It’s me machan,” remembers Rajendran with a laugh. In this day and age, the concept of ‘unreachable’ is rather alien for most, but this team did not have it that easy.
Like M Ganesan from Tirupattur who was tracked by his classmates all the way down to his new address and the postmaster in the main office. With a little convincing, this enabled them to collect the number of the specific postman who frequented Ganesan’s street. He was requested to give a missed call when near his house. However, Ganesan’s elderly father was not as pliable, refusing to share his son’s number with the postman.
So when Ganesan did eventually return home that week, he was shocked to learn that a police visit to his house had become the talk of the neighbourhood. Although now he’s got one heck of a story to tell his grandchildren before they head off to college!
The Loyola College Economics Batch of ’76 reunion will take place on October 8. The alumni who have tracked down a good number of their faculty as well plan to kick-off the day by recreating morning attendance with their original roll numbers.
Legal luminaries honoured at meet
Loyola College on Sunday honoured several legal luminaries, including Supreme Court Judge Justice Jasti Chelameswar, with its alumni award as part of its annual ‘Alumni Day’ celebrations. Besides Justice Chelameswar, a BSc Physics student of the college who passed out in 1972, the college also awarded its other alumni, Justices T S Sivagnanam, C T Selvam, V Bharathidasan, M M Sundresh (all from Madras High Court) and Justice R Sudhakar of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court. Senior advocates Krishna Srinivasan, PS Raman, Vijay Narayan and Joseph Kodianthara were also honoured on the occasion. Delivering his address as the chief guest, Justice Chelameswar said the role of education is to refine the value systems of students.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Express News Service / October 03rd, 2016