School reunion - 2017

School reunion -2017

Just returned from my school reunion at Bhubaneswar, a place I called home for almost 16 years. My wife Neena accompanied me for the visit.  I wanted to show her all the places I remembered as a child.

A   lot of things have changed in Bhubaneswar. The city has got flyovers, sign boards, lots of new hotels, clean and wide roads.  Some of the old landmarks have been completely refurbished like the Unit 2 market complex which has been made as a walking zone. Kalpana theatre was demolished, I was told a new mall was coming up in the place. The number of shops and have increased a lot. We visited the houses where we lived when we were in Bhubaneswar. We went to temples, had pav bhaji at Kailash pav bhaji center,  Had food at Venus Inn, ITC shismo hotel (This was earlier konark hotel) and The trident (earlier oberoi). We also went to the usual tourist places, puri, konark, khandagiri, udayagiri and shanti stupa at dhauli.

BJEM School had changed a lot, there was this new primary block in the place where we used to park our cycles.

The reunion was a simple but joyful occasion. Got to see long lost friends, some of whom had grown out of proportions!! The 3-4 hours I was at the party, I forgot about everything else. It was as if I was back as a school kid once more. I was surprised that I could still fluently speak oriya after hardly speaking it for the past 20 years. Would like to thank Dwarika who contacted me for this reunion.

Given a chance, I would love to get back to bhubaneswar as the city still retains its old world charm and simplicity.

A few pictures:

Mukteshwar temple

View of Beach from marine drive

Konark temple

Konark wheel

Dhauli

@ the Mausima Temple.

Unit II Market