The names, for the most part and for most people, would be unknown. Faces: easier but not by much. The hearts were eminently recognisable though. It was not an official gathering and not one planned by some official body, but the call by a few energetic alumni of the University of Peradeniya who were undergraduates in the 1980s was answered by hundreds of contemporaries from all the faculties.
The festivity - a bit of theatre, some speeches, a lot of music, an inter-faculty cricket tournament - was grand accompaniment to what it was all meant to be and was: a stroll into the past with old friends along multiple avenues decked with red flowers, tears and laughter.
Conversations, essentially. Of these there would have been many. Those with better memories or were better narrators regaled their respective audiences with anecdotes, those out-of-class things that is what is most remembered years after the world of books, lectures, exams and such have been left behind. Stories of people present. Stories of those who died, naturally and otherwise, while still undergraduates. Stories of those who are no longer around.
The dead. We had more than what could be called our fair share. Padmasiri, June 19, 1984. Not an activist’s death, but one which inspired activism related to the incident, naturally, and other issues as such there would be. And, sadly, death that could no longer be dismissed as ‘random’ or ‘accidental.’ Death that was deliberate even if, as some would argue, summoned by those who claimed to represent the classes to which the victims belonged; death that visited homes. And then, therefore, names remembered; the leaders, followers and those whose only crime was a singularly tragic status: undergraduate.
So we walked along that city (nagaraya) of another lifetime, the nagaraya that brought people together and sent them along divergent pathways, the nagaraya made of poetry cascading from the vines, floating in winds made visible by rains that move laterally, etched in love notes and disclosures that came too late, the nagaraya that was home to others later and is now home to still others, among them, children of the children of that time marked by upheavals unanticipated and yet lived through with fortitude and secret tears.
Reunions are about recognition and that is made for delight, embarrassment, understanding and forgiving. There was a lot of that on the 17th of June, 2023 from early morning to late evening. Confirmation grew as the hours went by: ‘yes, that’s certainly him, eminently recognizable,’ ‘yes, she is delightful as she was, adorable and enchanting.’
And so they communed, having banished at least for a while the deeper wounds, the regrets and squandered moments. Those who could never hold a tune, nevertheless sang. Those who could also did. They were all applauded. Those who had never attended cricket practices, executed lovely cover drives to wild cheers.
Duly updated about lives, thrilled to catch up, numbers must have been exchanged and promises made to meet again soon.
This university is not that university. These times are different. Reunions can’t turn all clocks back, but some reversal is possible. Speaking strictly for myself, I remembered those who left while still students, some who passed on later. I remembered what the WUS ‘Wala’ and the Sarachchandra ‘Wala’ meant to me, theatre and theatrics, the grand finale of the the Gandharva Sabhava, the demonstrations, political discontent, clashes that seem so petty now, fellow students, teachers and times in the various canteens and halls of residence.
The university, as it was then, was ‘decorated’ with posters. ‘Administration is atrocious and pernicious,’ someone said. He then explained, ‘there are so many posters about all the wrongs committed by the paripalanaya, just as there were when we were students!’
And we laughed at how little has changed. People, being so much older, were far more tolerant. ‘Enemies’ of that other era in a different century, embraced and laughed recalling how young and silly they had all been. Old enough now to know that no one is really bad, that everyone is at worst, ‘ok.’
The Galaha Road, from Wijewardena Hall to the Alvis Pond, was lined with red flowers. There must have been other flowers of other colours elsewhere, noticed by other people, the hundreds who were visiting, revisiting and probably recollecting other flower-days.
One flower for each friend who did not arrive, one each for friends who will not return, one for each poignant memory, one each for dreams, one for each unforgettable line uttered and heard, one for each act of arrogance and idiocy by way of acknowledging error and seeking forgiveness, many for those who tirelessly worked to make all this possible. Together, a singularly Peradeniya bouquet.
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