By – Rama Saha and Dilip Chaklabarti

After graduating from the class of1972 a whole bunch of Pharmacy students migrated to USA. Most of them came between 1973 and 1978. In the beginning it was not easy, whatever they decided to do, all of them had to do some odd job in different area of the work, some worked in drug stores as a drug clerk, some worked in restaurants while a few joined in other security jobs. Some of them joined colleges for higher study, some of them moved from New York to New Jersey or somewhere else. That was the path they took in the beginning of their lives in USA. Although they got separated physically by geographical distance but their mental connection was always stitched together with thread of J.U. Pharmacy Class, they became closer to one another by weekend telephone calls and sharing their experiences in their relative fields. Eventually they established themselves in their coveted fields, some started to work for Giant Pharmaceuticals, some started their own business. A group of them made their homes in Long Island and they started to make their weekends meeting one another like an extended family. Eventually these weekend family gatherings started to be known as “Goat Meet Party” of the Pharmacy Group.
In the meantime, years passed by the link between friends who were in other part of USA became feeble and one point it became almost nonexistent, everyone was busy in raising their children and families. There was no connection whatsoever unless someone needed something from his peer for any reason.
Two big incidents made the life upside down in USA, one is called 9/11 and the other is the recent one known as Covid Pandemic. In both cases our free movement has been enormously compromised and free mixing became a thing of past, even families refrained from meeting other members of the same family.
Since the apocalyptic Pandemic started the regular life of every country of the world has started to fall apart, restrictions are being imposed here and there and daily life is at its worst limitation in every walk of our society.
Being under this condition a group of Pharmacy Students of Jadavpur University who graduated in 1972 has converted these restrictions to their advantage and decided to meet their classmates through a zoom meeting and their yearning for the reunion of Pharmacy Class of 1972 made them call a virtual meeting and classmates from all over attended this Reunion on March 28, 2021.
Prior to the starting of the meeting our classmate Dilip explained the dos and don’ts of this meeting then one other classmate, Rama took the charge of the meeting and please see how she conducted this meeting from start to finish.
The first virtual Reunion of Class of 72 JU Pharmacy was called to order at noontime (EST) 9:30 PM (IST and Sri Lanka Time) 9:00 AM (PST) on March 28, 2021 by Dilip Chakrabarti, the initiator and dreamer of this reunion. Dilipda welcomed each and every member from our 1972 batch with open arms and expressed his cordial gratitude to the class for participating in this long-awaited reunion. He also explained the dos and don’ts of Zoom so that the meeting can run efficiently, smoothly and uninterrupted. He then turned it over to Rama Saha to conduct the meeting.
Rama Saha opened by thanking Dilipda for his great idea of this virtual meet and for giving her the opportunity to conduct the program. She also thanked everyone for taking their time off from their busy schedule and attending this virtual meeting. She was very happy to see that everyone complied with her request to wear blue like true blue friends, showing friendship that is genuine, dependable, trustworthy and loyal.
Rama took all the attendees of this Virtual meet for a walk down memory lane of Jadavpur University campus between 1968 through 1972 to revisit, relive and reminisce the wonderful, kaleidoscopic, colorful memories and good old times of our college life.
Rama structured the program in three segments: Introduction, Celebration of life – tribute to the batch mates who are not with us anymore, and an open session (adda). She tried to duplicate the college environment as if we are all spending a day or two at the University campus.
The first segment was Introduction of the attendees. For the fun of it, Rama suggested everyone to visualize sitting in a class room on the 3rd floor of Pharmacy building attending classes following the time table for that day. Professors for their respective classes walk in and start taking the roll call. Everyone answers the alphabetical roll call, by giving a very short introduction of themselves and relating nostalgic and fun filled incidents. This segment was opened with Tagore’s ‘Purano shei diner Katha’ sung by Anjali, Banani and Rathin. Banani sang a beautiful song on request. Lot of light, pleasant and laughing moments came back to our minds as we joked around about our professors and students remembering the old days sitting in that classroom.
The second segment was remembering our loved ones who are no longer with us. For this, she moved us to Vivekananda Hall to celebrate the program ‘Celebration of life’ to honor and pay respect to our friends who are not with us anymore. This program was opened with white colored candle lighting and display of white flowers remembering our friends Chittaranjan Maity, Mihir Kundu, Milon De, Pradeep Chaudhuri, Prashanto Sen, Rabin Sengupta, and Tapan Samadder. Arpan Mazumdar, Buddhadeb Mazumdar, Shyamal Sarkar, Pradeep Banerjee and Pratap Khan paid brief informal tributes to our lost friends. The order of rest of the service was a song by Anjali, recitation by Pratap followed by another song by Rathin and closing recitation by Dhruba.
The third segment was our most favorite –adda – adda and more adda. We visualized as if we all gathered in the open air of Vivekananda Rock, sipping Milonda’s bharer cha after mass cutting M.Pal’s class and having best time of our life as though there is no tomorrow.
Topics for discussion were: 3rd year Pharmacognosy class trip to Botanical Gardens, 4th year trip to Bombay to visit the Pharmaceutical companies, mass cut from M. Pal’s class, and planning for 50 years celebration in 2022.
Throughout the program the enthusiasm and excitement of the participants were overwhelming. This made it very hard to say goodbye but after about 4 hours, Rama finally bid farewell to all the attendees with the promise to meet again.
The meeting ended with a promise to bring together classmates from 1972 Pharmacy Department of J.U. from different parts of the world to meet, greet and plan for 50th anniversary celebration in 2022.
Finally, the program concluded with an inspirational poem written by Dilip Chakrabarti and recited by Dhruba and a vote of thanks by Dilipda.

N.B. It would be a matter of pride to mention that some of the members of this class have become the elite members of the Community, like scientists, accomplished writer, award winning philanthropist, CEO, founding members of temple in Long Island, successful business owners, College Principals, high ranking Officers in private and public sector and the list goes on and on.