At Rendezvous 2018, organised by the Association of South Point Ex-students (Aspexs), in association with The Telegraph, former Pointers made merry, relived memories and built bridges, including a cross-continental one.
The high point of this year’s reunion at the Mani Square rooftop banquet hall was the launch of the first overseas chapter of Aspexs. Once Lakkhichhara’s live rendition of Prithibita naki chhoto hote hote faded, all eyes shifted to a laptop screen which beamed visuals from Victoria Hall at Harrow in London where 50-odd Pointers had gathered. Meghnath Roy Chowdhury had the mic in hand in Calcutta, while his batchmate Suranjan Som coordinated the event in the UK. Once veteran teacher Soma Chatterjee came on screen, a chorus of “Hello, aunty” went up on the other side. “I am having goosebumps seeing you, aunty,” said a Londoner. “I am not gadget-friendly at all. To think they would ask me to speak online!” Chatterjee said later.
“‘Go global’ is our motto this year. We are all connected on social media but we thought of doing it officially. Now that the UK chapter is announced, we are getting calls from elsewhere too,” said Krishna Damani, the president of Aspexs.
The evening took off with a costume play where 13 superheroes from video games strutted on stage. “We have created a line of video games where we had characters designed on real-life people. They were the ones playing their own superhero figures,” said Arijit Bhattacharyya of Virtual Infocom. Thus Faizan Khan, as Kryptonium, tried to destroy the world with a punch, Ayendri Roy displayed karate moves as the magical warrior Shaina and Reya Debnath flashed a sword as Nishi.
The rest of the evening was by and for Pointers — right down to the security detail. “Debojit Choudhury, a director with the private security agency NIS, is a Pointer from the 1980 batch,” said Damani.
A host of restaurants, all run by ex-students, set up stalls to serve dinner.
Finally, there was music served up by DJ Nilashree, with retro hits like Jhumma chumma de de and Taki o taki ruling the playlist and rolling back the years on the dance floor.
Text: Sudeshna Banerjee
Pictures: Koushik Saha and Aspexs
