USA East Coast Alumni meet - 30 May 2010
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Event Narration and Details The seeds were sown about a year ago when I became an IETLAA Alumni member. Very soon, I found myself spending quite a bit of time on the Alumni website. It refreshed my nostalgic memories from the Institute where we have spent the best four years of our life. I was inspired and encouraged by watching the immense involvement and dedication by people like Sashi Kant Katiyar, Amita Arya, Sanjay Yadav, Rajiv Tivari and many more who are committed and are taking that extra mile to give back to the Institute and our colleagues through the Alumni Association. I started dreaming about bringing the East Coast family together one day. One person who added fuel to the fire was Shashi Kant Katiyar who upon expressing my desire on holding East Coast Meet immediately got me connected to Shivam and right then, I knew I could not have asked for a better person to work and coordinate this whole event. Unlike, US West Coast Alumni who are fortunate to have a dense population in bay area, our biggest challenge was with sparsely spread population starting from Maine to Florida. It became evident soon that majority of the IETians were in NY, NJ, and Washington DC Metro area and so, we decided that the location could either be NY/NJ or Virginia. We were suggested by Shashi Katiyar to pick Memorial Day weekend for this event. Being a long weekend, the possibility of folks willing to travel outside their home state increases, so, we immediately settled on this weekend. Since, it was our first Meet, it was important for us to poll the Alumni members and see if there is enough interest. The initial response was very good and a lot of people showed interest to come together. We immediately decided to hold the meet in New Jersey since, it is centrally located and allowed us to invite IETians residing in New York, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Massa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. It was a typical summer day on East Coast in New Jersey on Sunday, May 30 at Valley Road Park picnic area, Titusville, New Jersey. Few of us got to the venue couple of hours earlier to setup things and then, we anxiously waited for our first guests to arrive. Our first guests were Jyotsna (CS 1992), Umesh and her 2 sons followed by Poonam Gupta (EC 1993) who arrived with her husband, Amitabh and son from Maryland. Instantly, there was laughter, and loud talking all around. As people started to come, it was evident that we had the most wonderful and enthusiastic IET family on the East Coast. Everyone was excited to see and meet one another including our young alumni members, Rahul, Arvind, and Shivam. There was an instant connection and bonding that this place witnessed and something that is rare to find. 
We distributed the IET East Coast Alumni meet T-shirts which were donned by everybody to kick-in the IET spirit immediately and also distributed the day’s programme (which BTW impressed some of our IIT spouses ☺). This was a well thought surprise element of this Meet and the Alumni members were very appreciative of this. Being an outdoor picnic, we had an advantage of planning lots of activities for both adults and kids including magic show, tattoos, balloon sculpture, Dodge ball, Volleyball, Antakshari, and not to forget BBQ cook out. It was remarkable to see families and kids mingle well with each other. A few spouses deserved to get the Alumni T-shirt … Introductions turned out to be a lot of fun with everyone letting themselves loose …… “Antakshari” refreshed our nostalgic memories from IET…. We enjoyed singing old time favorites like “thaade rahiyo ho bakein yaar”, “ramaiya vasta vaiya”, “rambha ho”, “sare jahan se acha”..and many more…oh! Old melodies cannot be forgotten…..Once again, we proved that “Old is Gold”. I was surprised to find the young Alumni members singing to the old tunes……. Piñata was a big hit with the kids as the day came to an end. We managed to keep the kids sugared out at the end so they left on a high note …. We also enjoyed…listening to some solo performances by our favorite singer buddy, Shubhendu “Pal Pal dil ke Paas”, Tarun in his unique style “dekha na hai re socha na” and myself “babuji dheere chalna”…I am convinced that there is more hidden talent among this newly reunited IET family and hope to see a few more to be discovered in future Meets. It was a perfect day spent with the most wonderful, and energetic IETians. Everyone left but, we made memories of our lifetime. Folks who missed this opportunity will be able to get a taste of this wonderful camaraderie through pictures that will be uploaded soon on the Alumni website soon. Enjoy and anxiously wait for the next one… I hope to see more of us join the next one.
An event like this could not have happened overnight. The wheels started rolling weeks and months ago. It required planning and attention to details. I have been fortunate enough to be backed by a very talented, motivated and dedicated person, Shivam Patel who worked tirelessly to ensure success of the First ever USA IETLAA East Coast Meet on May 30th at Valley Road park Picnic area in Titusville, New Jersey. It is my immense pleasure to mention that we had representation from seven of the eight states that were invited. To me, this was a big achievement. Majority of the families travelled long distances for this Meet coming from Massachusetts, CT, NY, Virginia, MD, NC, Pittsburgh, and CA. This has proven that the spirit of being an IETian exists in each one of us who are willing to take huge leap for sheer love, affection, and a long lasting camaraderie. To me, everyone who attended the meet has taken an extra mile to be there. I would like to thank everyone for sparing precious time and sacrificing the long weekend to attend the Meet. This would not have been possible without your support, enthusiasm, encouragement, and positive attitude. I must mention names of few people that stand out in this Meet. Arvind Kumar flew from California (on Shivam’s insistence and coercing) and was very helpful with the preparation and setup. Rahul Jain had to manipulate his interview schedules just to attend Meet. He decided at the last minute (after my phone conversation with him) and was there despite very high bus fares from North Carolina. It was a great feeling to meet some of our very talented, hard working, and dedicated young graduates. I have no doubts that East Coast Chapter will fly with new wings very soon. I am short of words when it comes to expressing my gratitude for Shivam for everything that he has done in pulling this Meet together with ideas on location, event type, designing T-shirts, alumni promo, name labels, and my favorite of all, hand outs!! He was the person who was fully committed and worked tirelessly in supporting my efforts. I have an unanswered question for him “when do you sleep?” Before meeting Shivam, I thought I was pretty good with time management and handling multiple tasks and tons of responsibilities and still be able to give 100% to each of the tasks. I feel I have a long way to go and nowhere close to him. Shivam was in the middle of his graduation, moving out of the apartment the day he had to fly to NJ for the Meet while he still had to complete and print hand outs, burn music CDs, name labels..Wow!!! “How does he manage all of this?” I said this at my “welcome” speech at the Meet. I would like to re-iterate “Shivam is a model alumnus and we need more people like him.” Other notable mentions without whom this event was not possible are Shubhendu, Jyotsna, Rajeev (my husband and also an IETian) and my little volunteer, my son Saahil. These people were and always have been my support structure. They helped me with logistics, directions, game counseling, setting up the venue, purchasing snacks, beverages, and picking up and dropping a few folks. One kind gesture that deserves a mention is Shubhendu offering all the families considering spending the night in New Jersey to stay in his house. I have an immense admiration for all such people. I would like to thank Shivam, and Paritosh (IETian Savita’s husband) for taking charge of still photography. It is imperative that I thank some of our alumni spouses and kids. Ashuma Kaul and Ajita (Shubhendu’s wife and daughter) who helped setup the refreshment tables, sign-in desk, distributing hand outs and taking video clips; and Umesh (Jyotsna’s husband) who brought much needed additional stock of ice to make our beverages cooler on a hot day. We were faced with disappointment when some people cancelled towards the end which made planning and budgeting a challenge. I hope that people will keep their commitments in future meets. I would appeal to my fellow iETians to please consider joining this initiative and get the momentum going. In the beginning the task seemed daunting but as we progressed a lot of you lent a helping hand and helped me pull this through. It was because of YOU, the US East Coast Alumni members, who have made this event successful. Thank you all for being there. We hope to meet again soon. Vote of Thanks - Shivam Patel (CS - 2006) I didn’t plan to write a VoT initially but I felt that I may have a couple of people to thank and it’d be bad if I don’t acknowledge them. The credit for making this meet a reality goes to Reena Ma’am. She did the most difficult job of calling, texting and emailing people. The toughest part these meets is to convince people to come. She took this task and did an excellent job in coaxing people to attend. She went through all the east coast alumni list registered on the website and used her own contacts to find more. She created ‘evites’ and followed up with all the people who responded to the evite. From song selection that should be played on that day to the schedule for the day, her planning was meticulous and detailed. The spot selection, the choice of events and the food were all just so perfect. Kids were the happiest lot that day. They had a lot planned for them. Magic show, tattoo session, Pinata and dodge ball kept them engaged all day. Again Reena Ma’am and Shubhendu sir are to be commended. I must say that the camaraderie amongst the organizers was so amazing and exciting. Thank you Shubhendu sir. My role has been slightly overblown and I feel a bit embarrassed by that. All I did was clicks. Some tasks required a couple of clicks, others required a couple hundred clicks, but eventually they were all clicks and it was very easy for me to do all that I did. I am really thankful to people who did the real stuff of management and planning. Shashi Katiyar sir gets credit of proposing and pushing for this meet. He also gets credit of suggesting the ‘just right’ person (Reena Singh) to carry it out. Thank you sir. Arvind and Rahul, Thank you !! Their spirit was exemplary. Neither Arvind nor Rahul have started a full time job and there is no source of income for them as of today. I really thank you both for making it to the meet. I am sure if people with 3 digit bank balance (maybe 4 digit but definitely not 5 digit) can make it to meet when each of them had to take flights, buses, trains and long walks to reach the venue, every other alumni can. It’s only the keenness and enthusiasm that matters, nothing else. Last but not the least, the spouses – specially Rajeev Singh sir, Anu Ma’am (wife of Shubhendu sir) and Paritosh sir (husband of Savita Ma'am) are to be applauded for their support. After the long and tiring day, when a couple of families moved to Shubhendu sirs house, the chai and ‘khichri’ were such a relief. Thanks for your support and help for this meet. Everyone who was there is so glad that Paritosh took charge of photography and we have some lovely memories of the meet. Thanks to Ajita (Shubhendu sir’s daughter) for taking some videos which have come out pretty nice. |