Saee & Sriram (PGP 96)

Saee Joshi & Sriram Padmanabhan (PGP 1996)

Any relationship between two individuals, no matter where they met or how, or under what circumstances they spent their time together, is special for those individuals. It is uniquely special because of their memories, of silly jokes and sillier arguments, of brutal truths and kind lies, of public triumphs and private angst, of common friends and mutual dislikes, of vast aspirations and tiny fears, of countless words and comfortable silences; of the mutual and consummate knowledge of the other’s secret weaknesses and strengths, of the values, passions and interests held in common, but mainly, of the little things that are too numerous to list, too inconsequential to be remembered, too boring to be romantic, but which, in totality, are what constitute a life: the buying of groceries or of insurance, the filling of petrol or of tax forms, the planning of careers or of vacations, the keeping of minor promises and medical appointments, and a million other things…every single couple in the world can relate a story with these components. So what is so different about a campus couple?

Just the context, I suppose, on reflection. In the case of our marriage, for instance, the red bricks of Louis Kahn were at the very foundation of it, the sweet Rambhai tea provided its early sustenance, and the Stanford Ramp allowed it to take off and soar. Gradually, the campus and what we learnt there receded from the foreground, but remained as essential backdrop, cropping up ever so often in a shared lingo, in a few in-jokes that never grew old even while we did, in the way we reduced all marital decisions to criteria, weightages, options, and recommendations, in the way we applied Organization Behavior and Management Control Systems techniques to parenting, or in a strange craving at midnight for Maggi noodles.

Twenty years after we graduated, in December 2016, we flew 7,500 miles to go back to the place it began. It was a nostalgic reunion for everyone who attended, some of who were meeting after years; but it would have been equally nostalgic for the two of us if we were there just by ourselves, with nothing for company but those walls and the lingering echoes of laughter long ago.
Any relationship is uniquely special – ours is no different. But if you who read this, were once a student at this great institution, you will recognise that it has helped shape the thoughts, careers and character of all its alums. For campus couples like us, it shaped our lives and marriage as well.