Report on Alumni Meet 2003
Report awaited
12 June 2002
It was the Summer of 2002 and Delhi’s heat was at its cynical best. The date was 25 May 2002. After a week-long work, Subrat Beura (1998 Batch), Abhinav Madan, Dipnakar Das, and I (all from the 2003 Batch) kept our fingers crossed as we slumped into the heavily cushioned chairs at the Banquet Hall of Radisson Hotel, Delhi, waiting for the guests to arrive.
After a bad day that had been since the morning, Subrat’s spirits kept us ticking for the event. Guess what we had been through since the morning--Delhi had suddenly announced a 'Dry Day' –that meant no liquid that we were supposed to get from UDV and Foster’s, Maruti's backing out from sponsorship at the last moment, and what not...
Anyway, things started taking an interesting turn at about 7:30 in the evening, when the spirited XIMBians started pouring in ones and twos. By 8:30 p.m., slowly but steadily the number had risen to guess what--45, and by 9:15 p.m. another 40 odd people had checked in. The final count was around 93 guests which not only included the alumni but a couple of people from the batch that is about to join –Batch of 2004. And this report would be incomplete without mentioning the little girl who, I am sure, will be in XIMB campus by 2020--Mr. Mitul Rustagi’s (1996) 2 year old daughter, who kept the dance floor on fire from the beginning to the end. They were all there--the father, the mother, and the baby!
The evening started with Father Abraham making some very interesting announcements about how XIMB has grown and how it plans to grow in the next few years. Everybody unanimously agreed and appreciated the initiatives taken by the Institute to have representatives from the alumni in the Governing Board. Believe me, that would bring about a sea of change in our corporate relations with the profile of alumni we have in an around Delhi Region--they are all over the place--in Coca Cola, Gillette, GE, Sun Microsystems, PWC, McKinsey--you just name it and they are there in each and every top notch company that could come to your mind. And in what capacity?? Some have grown to become VPs in such a short span of time--need I say more?
This was followed by the very 'techy' looking Flash presentation called Nostalgia, our batch had made for the Alumni. The crowd just couldn't resist applauding and, you guessed it right, everyone did identify himself or herself in one situation or the other in the Flash presentation; someone identified themselves with crushed dreams of a major in finance, while some did with the drenched B’day parties. And then there was the batch intro with all the batches coming on the floor and introducing themselves and reminding us of what their batch did for XIMB--everyone had something special to say for his/her batch. It was real fun listening to the experiences of the people in the bygone days at the XIMB campus.
In the mean time people had already started hitting the bottle--thanks to Foster’s inspite of the 'Dry Day'! Dips and I managed to get the stuff from the Foster’s godown, which happened to be just a 90 kms up and down journey. Anyway the jam (read in Hindi) was worth it, at least Manish Kumar (2002), the Founder President of SAXIM ('Spiritual' Association of XIM) said so.
All’s well that ends well--the JLT was hysterical with the DJ playing all peppy numbers; no one could resist the floors. The dinner was just too good with around 5 salads and around 3 desserts on offer other than the main course; it was not just sumptuous but delicious. Yes, not to forget the names of the people who volunteered to become Batch Co-ordinators. The names are as follows:
1991: Punyaslok Dhall
1992: Zafrullah Khan
1993: Arjya Chakravarty (née Acharya)
1994: Vivek Prakash
1995: Asis Swain
1996: Mitul Rustagi
1997: Subrat Mohapatra
1998: Subrat Beura
2000: Ajay Kumar Sharma
2001: Manish K.Jha
2002: Manish Kumar
And there are several names who worked behind the scene and without whose contribution this meet would have been impossible. Some of the names are:
PNSV Narasimham (1991)
Zafrullah Khan (1992)
Sandeep Kumar (1998)
Karthik, Ankur, Vikram, Zahreen (2003)
There are lots of names I am sure I have missed; so please forgive me for my forgetfulness. Above all, a big THANK YOU to three people who made this event happen: Prof. D. P. Dash, Father Abraham, and our evergreen Subrat Beura who has been making it happen for the past three years almost single handedly.
Thanks to all the alumni and hope to see all of them again in XIMB Alumni Meet 2003. It ended at around 2 a.m. with a heavy downpour on the way back; it was as if the rain God wanted to dance with the XIMBians into the wee hours of the morning.
Signing off for now,
With best wishes for the next meet,
Ritesh Das, PGP 2003
riteshdas@rediffmail.com
Sponsors of the event: India Bank Card, ABN Amro, Motorola, ICI, UDV, Foster’s