Dressed in a crisp new white striped shirt and a pair of jet black trousers he hurriedly rushed downstairs, whizzing past the large mahogany table in the dining area making his way towards the main door. It was 7.55 am and this was a usual sight in the Joshi household everyday during the week when Aadarsh got ready for school which began at 8.30am. He had been doing so for decades now, but today was different, very different! Aadarsh Joshi, the physics teacher of class XII in Pahargarh Convent High School, himself an ex student of the same school, was not going to take classes on 'nuclear energy' or 'atomic physics', today. Rather today he would walk into the arms of friends with whom he had shared bench space while getting introduced to these topics for the first time in life. Today was the school's special Golden Jubilee celebration and to mark that many of the ex students, now rooted in different corners of the globe, had made this non-descript hill station their home for a couple of days.

While gliding past the main door, Aadarsh stopped for a minute at the foyer, staring into the ornate golden framed mirror. He saw an otherwise handsome man in his mid-30's with sharp chiseled features, smooth creamy complexion and a medium healthy build, but with slightly nervous eyes peering back at him. With quivering hands he hurriedly brushed his hair for one last time, while darting out when he was greeted by Anjali, his wife, looking resplendent in a beige and navy blue sari, waiting for him at the portico. She helped him wear the suit and then hopped in beside him into the car for their 15-minute drive to school.

Exams, students, teacher, group politics were usually common conversation during their drive; but today was a special day, very different from all the other days and there was an uncomfortable silence between the two of them. Though Aadarsh had played a pivotal role in assisting the Principal with preparations for the D - Day, simultaneously Anjali had been sensing some discomfort in Aadarsh. Only she was privy to his sudden mood swings, especially whenever the topic of the reunion with friends was broached. Anjali could not comprehend this strange juxtaposition because it was but her husband, who for the past one year had painfully gleaned different social networking websites to track ex-students of the school and communicate to them about this special event. And now it was the same person turning Mr Hyde at the mere mention of the reunion. She looked askance at her husband and found him stealing a glance at the majestic mountains time and again, which cradled the winding pathway they had to take during their drive to school.

"They are supposedly beautiful, and they captivated me within their confines for life," thought Aadarsh to himself. As he smirked at the thought, Anjali capitalised on the opportunity and asked him what was bothering him. He replied “Nothing”, and retreated back to his cocoon. Those 15-minutes seemed like 15-hours to Anjali as the silence between them was deafening and she struggled to fathom the reason behind it. "No it cannot be that. True to his name Aadarsh is too idealistic to even let such thoughts creep into him," thought Anjali brushing aside the probable causes that were hovering in her mind.
Finally what seemed like their longest ever drive came to a screeching halt as Aadarsh parked his car in the parking lot of the school campus. Even before he could step out of the car, he noticed two familiar figures walking towards them. Though they looked familiar, he could not locate who they were. "Maybe some super senior," thought Aadarsh to himself while the smiles turned to broad grins on the familiar faces. "Aadarsh you look younger, but senility has definitely got the better of you," screamed Mayank Sethi, one of Adarsh's batch mate and close friend. Aadarsh's jaw dropped open as soon as he realised it was Mayank. He looked double his age with a bear belly protruding out of his shiny grey suit. Next to him was Vishal Khanna, the topper of their batch, sporting a big bald patch on his head and the dark circles around his eyes made him look exhausted, with him  Aadarsh always had a marginal difference in the 'Grand Total' during the final exams making him rank a close second to Vishal. The three of them hugged each other and the warmth of the group hug transcended the time boundaries of roughly a couple of decades when they had last met. Aadarsh was the first to introduce Anjali to his friends, while he looked expectantly beyond Vishal, now a software engineer located in California and Mayank, now a financial analyst located in Mumbai, so that Anjali could also find company. Vishal introduced his wife Saloni, also a techie, who managed a superficial smile at all of them and then quickly, made her way towards a secluded corner in the parking lot and seemed busy talking on the phone. "She has these weekly update calls which she has to attend at all cost and they are really crucial," covered Vishal for Saloni's quick retreat. While Mayank said his wife an architect, could not accompany him as she had an important three-day conference to attend in Pune.

The Reunion had finally started with the three friends meeting, though Anjali felt oddly out of place and while walking towards the auditorium where everyone would be seated she tried looking for fellow teachers. But she could see none. So she shadowed the group of three friends, while Saloni gestured from the secluded corner that she will join them at the auditorium after her call gets over. Nearing the auditorium they saw another set of hands waving eagerly at them. "Isn't it Suresh, Vasu and Abhijeet. But why is Vasu not even bothered to look at us, instead seems to be fiddling with his phone," said Mayank as he boisterously barged into the group. He snatched Vasudev Jaiswal's phone from him and the lanky fellow looked up with a not so happy and dejected look. That's when the others informed him that Vasudev, now the marketing vice president of a start-up firm in Bangalore had invested heavily in shares. And that the Dalal Street tremors were now making its impact felt in his personal and professional life. "So poor Vasu he has been constantly tracking the markets from the time we met him," said Suresh Iyer, a domain consultant now based in Boston. These stylish designations were something that his name did not carry along with it, thought Aadarsh to himself with a sigh. Abhijeet Verma, now a CA based in Delhi, broke Aadarsh's flow of thought saying he really envied him for his still so youthful looks. "Why don't you share your secret with us," said Abhijeet while nudging at Vishal. All his friends definitely looked at least 10 years older to Aadarsh.

The six friends headed inside the auditorium where batch-wise seating arrangements had been made. There were only six of them from their batch, out of which two of them did not have their wives accompanying them. There were name plates cut out for each of them and they were placed alternatively to accommodate the spouses. Aadarsh had personally supervised the set-up in the auditorium. Once seated, there was no end to the constant chattering of friends. Nostalgia, old school days, teachers, pranks et al was discussed and while it just seemed like the friends had gotten talking, the  auditorium resonated with a loud round of applause for the present Principal who just walked in to take his place on the dais.

He welcomed the group that had taken long haul flights, train journey and road trips to reach their Alma Matter on this special day. This was mainly a boarding school, with very few localites like Aadarsh and most of them were boarders like Mayank, Vishal, Abhijeet, Suresh and Vasu. After highlighting about the growth of the school, he announced that the present office bearers of the school will sing the school's signature song. At this Aadarsh slowly felt a hand creeping up to his. It was Anjali. Seated on his right, she reached out to touch his hand and with her eyes conveyed the fact that she too felt special to be sitting by his side on this special occasion. Aadarsh patted her hand and looked around at his friends. Mayank was yawning and he looked really fatigued, Vishal kept turning his head looking towards the entrance expecting Saloni to join him, Suresh and his wife seemed engaged in a heated argument muttering under their breath at each other, Abhijeet was making a hurried exit with his cell phone beeping and his wife had an exasperated look on her face while Vasu was almost buried inside his cell phone. Not a sight Aadarsh expected to see around.

He still remembered that night, about 20 years back, at the hospital with a severe bout of asthma that he had suffered, during his first semester in a premier institute in Mumbai. His parents had to be rushed from Pahargarh to Mumbai to be by his bedside at the ICU. Aadarsh had always been a good student so with his kind of grades in the Joint Entrance Examinations he managed to bag a seat in a prestigious engineering college. But his dream of paving a bright future for himself was very short lived. Within the first couple of months he had to be admitted thrice to the hospital and once it was so severe that he landed in the ICU. The doctors felt that, acclimatized to the serene and pure atmosphere of the hill station, Aadarsh's body could not adapt to the pollution in big cities resulting in severe asthma. The only child of his parents, Aadarsh then succumbed to his mom's persistence and gave up big city life and returned to Pahargarh and pursued his graduation from the only college in his hometown. His father had insisted that he should give it another try and take up engineering in some other college in a different city, but the only son of a protective mother thought it was better to stay close to mother. That was a decision he kept regretting from the time he got into social networking websites and realised that his friends were all big fishes in a big world while he was still a little frog in the well.

Lost in his thoughts he was suddenly jolted back to the present when his name was announced for collecting the souvenir being handed over to all ex-students. He quickly walked up the stairs to the stage where he had often stood as a teacher, while assisting in the prize distribution ceremony of all school events. During the lunch time, the friends again resumed their conversation. That was when he realised certain facts which were unimaginable to Aadarsh. "Veena is really upset with me because this was the only weekend we got to be together in the past couple of months, and she feels that I dragged her to meet my friends in my school whereas I never cared to meet her friends," said Suresh. They actually stayed in different cities about an hour's flight away from each other. Aadarsh could not imagine staying away from Anjali even for a couple of days. That was when Vishal quipped, "Yeah life's really so hectic. Saloni and me, don't even get an opportunity to have our meals together. Juggling between pressing deliveries and calls each of us relies on convenience rather than togetherness. When on weekends we do get the opportunity, we are always with friends." He seemed tired and worn out of his life. "I am just waiting to make enough money so that I can enjoy an early retirement and build a beautiful villa for ourselves in some serene place, maybe Pahargarh. You have any idea what are the land rates here now," checked Vishal. Even before he could reply, Abhijeet joined them. "That would be my dream too. But I think by the time I repay my loan for the apartment in Gurgaon I will be too old to enjoy any of the pleasures of life," he chuckled. Mayank was quietly listening to all this. He was the only one without a lunch plate in his hand. A heart attack at the young age of 30 had ensured that he deprived himself of all the gastronomical delights. "So it looks like all of us are aspiring to get where Aadarsh already is," he said at the end of it. That was when for once Vasu looked up from his phone and nodded vehemently acknowledging the fact.

The fact! 'Was it actually the fact?' wondered Aadarsh. Though he immediately said, "The grass is always greener on the other side friends," but his heart had started accepting the fact that his friends had traded their life, youth, health, personal relationships for the sake of fancy designations and heavier wallets while the things that the heavy wallets are intended to buy where things that he always had with him. He had a palatial house in a picturesque hill station with clear serene ambient air, a secure relationship with a beautiful wife, and a profession that may not promise a fancy designation but definitely was the fancy of every child as a beginner at school, and was sans the stress. The mountains had indeed protected him he thought to himself, while sharing all the details of the day with Anjali. During the drive back home Anjali found back the Aadarsh she had lost, to the menacing grip of inferiority complex. And when they reached home, Aadarsh peered into the ornate golden framed mirror to stare into the eyes of a confident teacher!