When I started my job in July, a lot of my colleagues immediately took a few days or an extended weekend off to go to their respective colleges for their convocation. I knew Anna University would delay it, and like hundreds of other people, I thought it should happen as soon as possible so that we could have a degree in our hands, put up a new profile picture on Facebook and celebrate the fact that we’re now engineers.

Coming to think of it now, it seems to have been an extremely good decision on the part of the University to keep it in March (a part of the credit goes to the Chennai rains and the succeeding floods). At this age when people go about their own lives in peace not giving much thought to the past except the odd throwback moments when they’re sitting in front of a computer trying to zone out for a bit, this was a welcome reunion. You can call me a romantic, but I always imagined reunions to be very emotion-filled and happy, which get us to reminisce the moments we have savoured in our personality and career defining period of our life.

Dressed in full formals, most of us were surprised or shocked when we were shown yellow gowns which kinda looked like what people call colloquially, a woman's nighty. But it kinda grew on us and since yellow is a very picturesque colour, it made even the most unphotogenic people look good on the portrait pictures taken in DSLR cameras. The main event was kind of a letdown, primarily because most of the students in the audience (or should I say former students now) were busy trying to catch up on countless topics over the past one year with their neighbours. But I'm pretty sure the gold medallists enjoyed it.

I’ve come to college a couple of times in the past one year but have always found the spice missing. The striking factor was the lack of people around me. That’s the difference between a general visit to the campus and a reunion, in this case, our convocation. Right there, I was spending time with exactly the same set of people who were with me throughout college life, lived my life through good times and the bad, and shared more time, room and mind space than parents or siblings.

I had more fun living this day, than anything else I had done all year. A part of me didn't want to leave, just like how Harry Potter didn't want to leave Hogwarts to stay with his monstrous uncle and aunt every summer. Except now, we are leaving for our indefinite summer hoping for the next reunion to arrive as soon as it can so that it can take us back to the good old days.

Let’s all raise a toast for Graduation Day, for that one last big homecoming, which would serve as more than just a piece of memory when we look back at it 20 years from now.