Lots of harks-back-to-the-past: running into Nagaraj Shankar (Naga was the "Best Outgoing Student" fromy our COEPian batch of '01), meeting Nirmal Vora from Adarsh back from my Madras days and getting from him an egroup that features intermittent keep-alive packets from some classmates that I haven't heard from in a while and teachers from my 12th. Nirmal & I went over some funny things that that happened, like amateur spying, paper-ball cricket, school elections, class plays, The Great Pen-game (which involved lotsa Reynolds pens on a desk, at which Nim was pretty good): what stood out was the immense intensity we invested in all of those activities. Closer to my current life were the days in 12th and the talk was about different things, my teachers spoke how things have changed (no surprise, this is the top point of conversations in most reunions!) as they thought kids were being more hedonistic in life. Naga was a typical Mech guy, the kind of guy that fitted the COEP mould of versatility in its students, and the kind of guy one would want to have in one's team no matter what the contest was. One event typified him: the occasion during the Punt Formation practice when he jumped off the punt in a daring rescue act (daring because of the state of the Mula river) only to discover that the drowners were urchins having a game.