When the school bell rings again

THERE is something wonderfully democratic about a school reunion.

For a few hours, the titles acquired over the years become strangely unimportant.

The Datuk is somebody’s former backbencher. The professor is remembered for forgotten homework.

The retired chief executive is still called by the nickname he hoped had vanished with his school uniform.

And the class joker, after decades of respectable adulthood, needs only minutes to become 17 again.

Time may change our faces, but old friends have inconveniently good memories.

They remember things our carefully curated adult biographies somehow omitted: the failed test, the disastrous haircut, the secret crush and perhaps that one incident best left outside the official school history.

LinkedIn may know what we became. Old classmates remember the raw material.

Recently, an old school friend, Leong Mei Ling, suggested I write about a reunion of former Sri Amanians, now in their 60s and ripening into their second harvest, gathering this November after leaving their bangku sekolah many donkey years ago.

Her invitation got me thinking. Why do people cross countries and continents to spend an evening with those they may not have seen for decades?

Surely it cannot be only for the buffet, group photograph and increasingly adventurous attempts to identify one another.

Something deeper is happening.

A reunion is partly nostalgia. But it is also an audit of time – not of what we accumulated, but of what endured.

And somewhere between “Aiyoh, is that really you?” and “Remember when...?”, we discover that some of life’s most valuable assets never appeared on a balance sheet.

When friendship becomes intentional

At 18, friendship often happens almost accidentally. We sit beside somebody because the teacher puts us there.

We share a dormitory, football field, laboratory bench or canteen table.

We borrow notes, exchange food, survive examinations and occasionally unite against a common disciplinary threat.

Then adulthood intervenes. Careers scatter us. Marriage enlarges our circles. Children arrive. Parents age. Some migrate. Some prosper. Some struggle quietly.

WhatsApp groups eventually replace the corridors where conversations once happened naturally. Then one day, somebody types: “Reunion, anyone?”

In youth, friendship is often circumstantial. In later life, it becomes intentional.

A friend from Sarawak once told me that these days, whenever a reunion invitation arrives, she tries her best to attend.

Once we reach our 60s, she said, we can no longer assume there will always be another year, another dinner or another convenient opportunity.

When young, “next time lah” sounds harmless. At 60, later becomes a slippery word. Showing up becomes an expression of affection. Perhaps that is one of ageing’s quieter promotions: we graduate from counting invitations to appreciating them.

At 30, a crowded calendar can feel like importance. At 60, an old friend making room for you in theirs feels more like wealth.

My own band of brothers

I know this through my own Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia circle – our little band of brothers from university days.

Decades later, our stories survive, though some have undoubtedly improved with repeated telling.

Memory, like good wine or bad evidence can become creative with age.

We still gather. Hairlines may have shifted. Waistlines have negotiated separate settlements. Knees occasionally issue unsolicited policy statements.

Yet when the band meets, years and titles fall away. We repeat stories everybody knows and still laugh as though hearing them for the first time. But our gatherings now carry a quieter meaning. We also remember the brothers who have passed on.

Their absence has names, faces and stories. Sometimes we remember them with laughter; sometimes with silence.

The empty chairs speak too. And somehow, the brother who can no longer sit at the table remains part of the conversation.

That has taught me something about reunions. They are not only about those who answer the WhatsApp invitation.

They are also about keeping faith with those who once walked beside us and can no longer come.

Once, we were friends because life put us together. Today, we gather because we choose to. And that choice itself is gratitude. Perhaps that is the mathematics of friendship in later life: the circle may become smaller, but its circumference somehow feels more precious.

We stop counting how many friends we have and start giving thanks for those with whom no explanation is necessary.

Put old classmates together and watch. The former joker resumes joking. The shy student becomes shy again.

The old prefect starts organising everybody without being appointed.

Forty years of professional authority can evaporate when somebody across the table calls out your school nickname.

We do not merely remember our younger selves. For a little while, we become them again.

Perhaps old friends possess a key to a room within us that adulthood rarely enters. They remember versions of us before the résumé, mortgage, job title and grey hair arrived.

At a reunion, nobody is particularly impressed that you once occupied the corner office if they remember you falling into a drain after Sports Day. It is a useful correction to the ego.

Of course, every reunion has its drama.

First comes recognition. Forget the titles - Datuk, Datin, Professor, Doctor or otherwise. The challenge is more fundamental: Who is that?

Faces change; smiles often do not. Names disappear at precisely the wrong moment and return five seconds after the handshake. People inspect nametags like archaeologists deciphering ancient inscriptions.

Then comes that famous greeting: “You haven’t changed at all!”

A gracious compliment, warmly received - and after four decades, occasionally a small and elegant work of fiction.

The less diplomatic friend chooses another route: “Aiyoh! I can’t recognise you!” More truthful, perhaps. Also more dangerous.

In reunion diplomacy, honesty is admirable, but tact remains the better elective.

Ageing, after all, is the most democratic institution we will ever join. Hair thins, retreats, changes colour or returns under suspiciously improved management. Waistlines renegotiate old boundaries. Knees develop opinions.

Time grants no exemptions. Yet perhaps therein lies some grace. As vanity is trimmed by the years, affection becomes clearer.

The report card gets rewritten

Reunions also challenge the report cards we silently wrote about one another when young.

At 17, we noticed popularity, beauty, examination results, sporting ability and swagger.

Life uses different marking criteria. The class genius may not have had the easiest journey. The backbencher may have flourished. The student who seemed to possess everything may have endured private sorrow. The quiet classmate nobody noticed may have become the glue holding a family together.

By 60, we notice different qualities: kindness, loyalty, humour, resilience, generosity - and who still bothers to show up.

The glitter fades. The gold shows. That is why a good reunion should not become a competition in accumulated success.

A gentle reminder: do not be too kaypoh or show-off, ya. Curiosity is fine; interrogation is not. Sharing is welcome; self-advertising can quickly turn nostalgia into marketing.

Nobody needs the complete résumé between the satay and dessert.

Nor is the reunion table an AGM requiring everyone to present their forty-year performance report. By this age, perhaps the better KPI is simpler: were you kind, did you remain a friend, and can everyone still laugh with you?

Ask instead: How have you been? How is the family? What has life taught you? The answers may tell us far more than job titles ever could.

Malaysia’s old classroom of muhibbah

There is another reason reunions matter in Malaysia. For many of us, school was one of our earliest classrooms in muhibbah.

Before diversity became corporate vocabulary and social cohesion became policy language, children often practised both without knowing they required terminology.

We shared textbooks, exchanged festive food, borrowed stationery, cheered the same school team and occasionally protected one another from the discipline teacher.

Laughter has no race. Mischief has no religion.

We should not romanticise the past. Schools had cliques, prejudices, inequalities and teenage dramas. It was never a perfect multicultural paradise.

But it was shared space. That matters.

Malaysia today can sometimes feel more segmented and suspicious of difference. A reunion cannot repair politics or rebuild social cohesion by dessert time.

But it can remind us of something worth preserving: the ordinary habit of sitting comfortably with people whose backgrounds differ from ours.

Nations are not held together by policy documents alone. They are held together by millions of small acts of familiarity, trust and everyday decency.

Perhaps the Malaysia we sometimes search for in grand national conversations has been hiding in smaller places all along - in old classrooms, canteens, playing fields and friendships where difference was noticed but did not have to become distance.

Sometimes nation-building does not begin with a manifesto. Sometimes somebody simply moves a chair and says: “Come, sit here.”

Showing up is the gift

As reunions grow older, remembrance inevitably becomes part of them. We notice not only who has arrived, but who is missing. Some live too far away. Some are unwell. Some friendships drifted apart. Some classmates have died.

In youth, we assume the class photograph is permanent. Age teaches otherwise.

So bring out the old photographs. Open the school annuals. Remember classmates who can no longer attend. Tell their funny stories. Allow a little silence too.

And wherever possible, invite former teachers. Help with their transport if necessary. Welcome them properly. They once stood before us when we were noisy, uncertain young people with more energy than wisdom.

Then sing the school anthem. The voices may have lost some range. The gratitude may have gained much more.

Technology has changed reunions too. Zoom, Teams and other platforms mean those unable to travel can still appear on screen, wave, laugh and join the remembering.

Once, absence meant absence. Today, even a small rectangle on a phone screen can carry a very large heart.

But whether physically or digitally, the important thing is presence. Perhaps that is ultimately what reunions teach us about ageing. Relationships do not maintain themselves.

Somebody must send the message. Somebody must book the table. Somebody must travel. Somebody must say, “I will come.”

And yes, organising reunions can be exhausting. Chasing responses and coordinating schedules may test friendships before celebrating them. So share the work.

Nostalgia is much easier to enjoy than to organise. Or, in Sabah language: share the load-bah.

When the bell rings again

So yes, there is a story in the Sri Amanians gathering this November. But the larger story belongs to all of us.

School reunions are not really about travelling backwards. We cannot. They are about carrying the past forward more gently.

They allow us to meet the people we once were, appreciate the people we became, remember those who helped us along the way and recognise that, after all the striving of adulthood, being remembered with affection is itself a form of wealth.

There is something profoundly human about an old friend looking across a crowded room and saying: “Eh, I still remember you.”

Four ordinary words. Yet beneath them lies something extraordinary: You were there. You belonged. You mattered.

Perhaps that is why people fly home from overseas, drive across states and rearrange busy lives for reunions.

Not because they are trying to become young again. But because age has finally taught them what was precious when they were young.

To the Sri Amanians gathering this November, to my university brothers whenever we gather again, and to old classmates everywhere: may there be laughter, old photographs, remembered teachers, absent friends honoured gently and enough humility to recognise that some friendships never really left the room.

So when the next reunion invitation arrives, perhaps do not be too quick to reply: “Next time lah.” While we still can, let us meet again.

The school bell may have rung donkey years ago.

But now and then, by grace, it rings again.

Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.