Elixir

If you were offered the elixir of immortality, would you take it?

Being eternally young would be awesome wouldn't it? Imagine being, say 15 years old all your life. No aches and pains of a 50 year old, no feeling tired all the time, no kids to worry about or spouse to fight with, no aging parents keeping you awake at night with concern, no bills to pay, no insomnia, eat like a horse and barely gain weight, no doctor visits and health metrics to check on...well you get the idea.

Could there even be a flip side to this? Look around you...all the people around you might not be graced with the same gift. So what happens then? They age and eventually disappear from your life..you watch them go through the aging process and all the attendant issues and finally experience the pain of losing them..while you hang around forever. So this whole eternal youth thing might be overrated.

So what's the middle ground? 

How about being able to time travel for short periods, be a youngster again and then get back to your present day life? Now we're talking! 

And now, how about being able to pick friends you can time travel with?  It's getting warmer!

And how about meeting up in the most beautiful of places, just enjoy each other's company, drink in the scenery, share experiences, fight about what happened years ago, correct the version someone remembers or alter your rememberance of events, laugh about things, cry over some others, get pissed off and calm the hell down. That's much better!

And then go back, back to your present day life, altered, but feeling still the same, at your age but somehow feeling younger, waking up from a sweet dream with that feeling of joy bubbling within you but not regretting being woken up because you know you can do it again. Bingo!

Well, this past weekend, we managed to do just that. Thirteen of us who had gone to undergraduate school together back in India and graduated thirty years ago, decided to meet up in scenic Georgetown, Colorado. We booked tickets, set up accommodation, planned and stocked up on food, checked out things to do at Georgetown, googled restaurants and breweries and generally were sure we had taken care of everything. 

This get together was months in the making, but like everything in life, things took an interesting turn the day we were all flying in.

A software update to a security code happening in Texas, made blue screens pop up everywhere..Intel had it bad but so did hospitals, and ofcourse airlines. The cascade of delays began early in the morning and we still haven't seen the end of it. We were all flying in from every corner of the US and very few of us escaped unscathed. 

As inauspicious as flight delays might sound, we did manage to coordinate meet ups in the airport, shared rental cars and managed to congregate at a friend's house in Denver. The thrill of seeing classmates we hadn't seen in 30 years was already making us feel a few years younger. After a quick dinner, we set out to the AirBnB we had rented when the second snafu hit. A typo had been made in the address and so the first set of people trying to get to the place had an adventurous thirty minutes not getting shot while trying to check door numbers and backyards and finding the right house. And all this close to midnight on Friday. We finally made it in and the party started!

People trickled in into the wee hours of the morning and we gradually woke up Saturday all excited about catching up on 30 years worth of each of our lives. Hiking on green filled trails on the lakeshore while talking over each other and trying to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of each other's lives, laughing at stuff that had been jogged in our memory by someone, sighing while remembering classmates we had lost in the in between years, all the while feeling the years dropping away. Back at the house, we settled in the sunny backyard while the menfolk tried out the kayaks and also a funky wig our resident naughty imp had brought with him. We were all clicking pictures like crazy and posting them online in all the whatsapp groups that our college friends had. But most of us weren't stuck to our phones, like we would usually have been on a lazy Saturday. 

Lunch at a brewery nearby while playing musical chairs with each other before finally settling in and placing our orders. Sharing food and camaraderie and ribbing the teetotellers while passing around tater tots and fries. Loud and rambunctious, the years  still falling away,  we finally wound up lunch and walked back home. 

Hearts and tummies full, we congregated in the lowest floor of the house and chatted away for the better part of a couple of hours until it was coffee time. 

A quick visit to church and a stroll  through downtown, followed by a pizza dinner and a walk down memory lane with a renowned young singer made us feel even more younger.. we were almost back in college. And then there was an impromptu open hearted conversation about our time back in college which became not just nostalgic but also cathartic for some, maybe all. Bedtime was actually Sunday morning and waking up knowing we had to wind up was painful..but we made the most of the half day we had before checking out. More beautiful hikes and breakfast followed by a drone operated photo session and finally it was time to leave. A quick check of the house to make sure everything was ship shape and then we were off. Back to our friend's house in Denver, lunch and more chatting and joking and laughter before we started our heart heavy trip back to the airport for our flights home.

With flight delays and really long security lines, the last of us got home in the wee hours of Tuesday morning  and we all eventually turned 50+ again. Back to the grind of daily life. Jobs to go to, houses to manage, calories to watch,  steps to count, traffic to fume over, politics to rage about, and ofcourse, family. 

Why should family be just defined by relatedness? Why can it not be defined by shared experiences? Doesn't the fact that kids barely stepping out of their teenage years ,congregating in a college for four solid years,  living and breathing and studying and gaining knowledge and experience and losing and winning in life together make us family?

When our parents sent us off to Karaikudi,  we were all seventeen or eighteen year old. We all shed our childhood in the ensuing four years and graduated not just with a degree in Engineering, but as adults ready to face the world. That was what all of us did together. We grew up together.  We grew up in the same house, ACCET. Almost siblings? Weren't we?

I can see the imp rolling his eyes already because I married a classmate...stop!

So we are all back in our respective homes, but still feeling high. And this high will last a while. Hopefully until we meet again. And hopefully very soon. 

Waking from a lovely dream usually is not welcome. But this one was.  Reality is fine. Because we know we can recreate that dream again. Our first attempt, I would say was a roaring success and all of us I'm sure would agree that more meet ups are warranted. When and where is TBD. But when you're family, the minutiae doesn't matter. We'll get it done!

Here's to a reunion again, soon!