The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Don Bosco `boys' reminisce about their good old days

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Friday, May 25, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Don Bosco `boys' reminisce about their good old days

Susan Muthalaly

Batch of 1987 gets together at Mathsya two decades after passing out of school

CELEBRATING THE PAST: The Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School batch of 1987 at a recent reunion at Mathsya.

CHENNAI: The grubby-kneed boys of Don Bosco School batch of 1987 may not have all become doctors and engineers (which were the favoured ambitions those days).

But they do have among them the reigning World Number One chess champion, a successful city jeweller and computer engineer Rishi Kumar from the film `Roja', who was the dream man of the 90s.

Vishwanathan Anand, actors Arvind Swamy and Vijay Adhiraj and 20 other `boys' got together recently here at their Don Bosco classmate Ram Bhat's (or Bhatta) restaurant Mathsya two decades after their passing out of school. It was an informal gathering to celebrate each other and Anand's newly acquired world number one status.

Anand mingled with his classmates, posed for photos and caught up with people he lost contact with several years ago. "There are these faces I haven't seen in a while, so it's nice," he said.

The men reminisced about school days over food that they had relished even as children, as they were frequent visitors to Mathsya.

Adhiraj, now a successful TV personality, said he wanted to be a doctor back then. "But with my marks, I couldn't even have made it as a compounder," he said, guffawing.

Anand, who started playing chess when he was six, was pretty sure he wanted to be a chess player. When asked for interesting anecdotes, he claimed he was a "well-behaved" boy. "The only time I bunked assembly, as luck would have it, the principal, Father Simon, announced my name and I got caught."

Arvind Swamy said the school culturals were the highlight of his growing-up years. "Strangely, I used to be in the dance team. I know it didn't show in my films," he said, grinning.

Adhiraj summed up the general opinion, saying, "I'd any day trade everything to get back my school days."

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