Slowing down in a fast world

Recently, I attended the BITSAA Global Meet -2026 (BGM) at the BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. It was meant to be an occasion to reconnect and foster camaraderie, an opportunity to rejoice and rejuvenate after a long period of separation, an event meant to rekindle the BITS-Pilani spirit. The organisers had time and again emphasised how this meet would help alumni learn about earth shaping technologies of the future, share transformative ideas, enable meet successful startup founders, allow investment in innovative ventures but above all, let us walk down memory lane soaking ourselves in campus nostalgia.

The official theme of the Global Hyderabad Meet was ‘Network, Navigate, Nostalgia’. Three neat words, beginning with “N”, safe, sensible, even reassuring. Three words that would sit comfortably on a conference backdrop, on conference tee shirts, right next to sponsors’ logos, alongside smiling group photographs. But strip away the bunting, and the meet raised a modern day question. Do alumni meets still deserve our time, attention and airline tickets, or are they merely nostalgia dressed up in the garb of networking?

To put it mildly, I was sceptical. In an era where LinkedIn connects you to strangers you have never met, where WhatsApp groups never sleep, where “networking” is often reduced to exchanging QR codes, what exactly does an alumni meet offer that a smartphone doesn’t? The answer, it turned out was not performance, alumni meets are gloriously ineffective. They are valuable only because they involve long conversations that go nowhere, enable chance encounters that are not “actionable,” and discussions that do not end with a calendar invite. Nostalgia is often accused of being indulgent, backward-looking, even lazy, but when shared, performs the social function of levelling hierarchies.

The CEO, the startup founder, the consultant and the retiree, all become former students, complaining about hostels, faculty legends and disastrous examinations. This matters more than we admit. In professional life, we are usually on our guard, alumni meets allow us to be our true selves, if only temporarily.

At alumni meets, networking that feels more like speed dating, happens sideways. You don’t pitch but you have to reminisce, you don’t sell but you have to reconnect. The result is slower, but stickier. Fortunately trust formed over shared history lasts longer than trust formed over business cards. The Hyderabad meet demonstrated this well.

Conversations wandered, from careers to failures to reinventions, without any pressure to perform. LinkedIn posts following the event reflected this subtle shift. Beneath the selfies and group photos were quieter reflections about reconnecting with old batch-mates, rediscovering forgotten confidence and realising that one’s struggles were no different from everyone else.

‘Navigating’ was perhaps the most relevant purpose of the alumni meet. We live in a time of professional anxiety. Skills expire faster than last year’s smartphone. Careers zigzag unpredictably. Alumni meets provide a perspective across decades. When you speak to someone who has survived multiple disruptions, be they technological, economic or personal, you realise that uncertainty is not a bug of modern life, but a feature across professional eras.

Launching of books by alumni authors was a special innovation at this meet. I was one of the seven authors who launched a book. On paper, this might sound odd, after all who launches books at alumni gatherings? But the quirkiness was precisely the point. Alumni meets are among the few professional spaces where intellectual curiosity still carries merit. The book launch did not feel like a marketing exercise but a conversation starter, no breathless promise, just thoughtful rare and energising engagement. Did it make sense in measurable terms? Probably not as marketing dashboards would, but it still helped in more durable ways of credibility, dialogue, conveying the sense that writing is not just a hobby but carries a professional identity.

There is a BITS Pilani in Goa, with an ecosystem permitting an opportunity to do this differently. Less grandstanding, more conversation, fewer speeches, more stories, a much less obsession with “impact,” but more focus on continuity, Goa’s laid-back culture may resist formal gatherings, but if Hyderabad showed anything, it was that alumni meets thrive when they embrace both seriousness and humour.

The real danger to alumni meets is over-engineering, where every reunion becomes a summit, every gathering a conclave, something essential is lost. Alumni meets work best when they focus on orientation, reminding us where we came from, leaving us to decide where we are going. Yes, alumni meets can be awkward, they can feel indulgent, mildly ridiculous but they do perform a quiet cultural service of sort by slowing us down in a world addicted to acceleration. And that’s why alumni meets, inconvenient and enervating as they are, refuse to die!

(Priyan R Naik is a columnist and independent journalist based in Bengaluru.)