This year’s OSA Onam celebration had a different backdrop than usual — with our own college hall under renovation, the Old Students Association gathered instead at Levee Hall in the Royal Family Heritage Building at East Fort on Sunday, September 20th. Nearly 200 old students, spanning our 50s to our 80s, filled the hall, proof that an alma mater’s pull doesn’t fade with the years. Levee Hall added its own quiet grandeur to the occasion—high ceilings, vintage chandeliers, and portraits of a bygone era looking on as saris in cream and gold filled the room.
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Song, Thiruvathira, and Togetherness
Gadha Ma’am, as always, anchored the proceedings with her familiar warmth. Two group songs opened the celebration, and then came the heart of the afternoon — a grand Thiruvathira, danced by around twenty participants in a circle of rhythm and cream-and-gold kasavu sarees. There’s something about that particular dance, and that particular hall, that makes decades of separation disappear for the length of a song.
A Royal Presence at Our OSA Onam Celebration
As she has every year until now, Pooyam Thirunal Gowri Parvathi Bayi took her place in the Thiruvathira circle — at 84, still enthusiastic, lively, and beautiful to watch. Her younger sister, Aswathy Thirunal Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, couldn’t join us this year, but her connection to our college runs deeper than most know: she graduated in Economics in 1966 — the very same department where I did my own undergraduate degree, years later. It’s a small thread, but it’s one I think about every time her name comes up at these gatherings. The elder princess gave a brief welcome address; otherwise, the afternoon was kept free of speeches, letting the songs and dance do the talking.
Honouring Our Veterans
A few moments stood out for how they honoured age with achievement rather than treating the two as separate things. Marykutty, an 85-year-old alumna, was given a ponnada for her meritorious service — and for good reason: she recently returned from Chennai with two gold medals from a sports competition. Girija Chandran — known across Thiruvananthapuram simply as “Regatta,” after the dance school she runs, Regatta Natya Sangeetha Kendra — was honoured the same way, having received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award 2025 for her contribution to Mohiniyattam, after training nearly a lakh students over 53 years. Watching them being felicitated was a reminder that this OSA Onam celebration isn’t just nostalgia — it’s also a chance to celebrate what our contemporaries and seniors are still out there achieving.
Awards in Memory of Our Parents
The princess also presented a set of awards to needy students, several of them sponsored by old students in memory of their own parents — a lovely way of keeping family names alive within the college that shaped us.
A Feast Cooked by One of Our Own
No OSA Onam celebration is complete without the Onasadhya, and this year’s was prepared by a caterer who is herself an old student of the college — full circle, in the truest sense, right down to the banana leaf. Course after course arrived exactly as a sadhya should — avial, olan, thoran, and payasams among them — each one a small reminder that some traditions are worth returning to every single year.
Until Next Onam
Dressed in kasavu, surrounded by old friends and a few genuinely new faces from batches long before mine, this year’s OSA Onam celebration felt like exactly what it’s meant to be — different journeys, one alma mater. After an equally warm Onam earlier this season at my research center, GCTE, with its own oonjal and sense of belonging, this OSA gathering turned out to be my last Onam celebration of the year — and I couldn’t have asked for a warmer one to close it on.
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