Seevaratnam!

The one word jolted me out of bed on Monday morning. I jumped out from under the covers, ran straight to the computer and Googled it immediately.

There, in the semi-piercing light of my computer at seven in the morning, was the familiar face I had been looking for.

It was the name of an Indian girl who was in junior college with me. For weeks, a bunch of us former classmates had been trying to track her down for a 20-year class reunion the previous Saturday.

The problem was that no one could remember her surname, for some reason. She was always known to us as K., which was her first name.

To make things worse, she was also the only one in class who did not seem to have kept in touch with anyone since we graduated.

So although we eventually tracked down every person in our class, no one seemed to know where K. had gone, what she studied and what she was doing now. With just her first name, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

It turns out that she is a lecturer in a local university, and has a PhD. At least that's what the computer was telling me.

I suddenly felt sad.

The reunion had been fun and many of my former classmates had asked about her. I've since e-mailed her but have not received a response.

I should have tried harder to track her down, maybe even looking up the old school registers.

It was important because even though we had not kept in touch with her, I found at the dinner that we all remembered K. fondly. My Eureka moment came several days too late. She should have been there.

In the end, more than 20 of us turned up for the reunion, which we decided to hold in a restaurant located within an old school compound in Mount Sophia.

It wasn't quite the Bukit Batok campus that we had attended in 1989 (Hwa Chong Junior College was temporarily located there when it was being rebuilt), but it was certainly 'retro' enough for our purpose.

As the key organiser, I went there early. It was raining cats and dogs and I was worried that people wouldn't show up.

But everyone did, with smiles on their faces and stories to tell.

Some of them I still see on a regular basis because we have become colleagues or best friends, but there were others I have really not met since the day we left school.

Little by little, we pieced together the collective history of our class of 48 Humanities Scheme students - the journalist in me extra fascinated by the way our paths have diverged.

About a fifth of us are no longer working or living in Singapore. Most of those who migrated are in Britain, where they went to university, and the rest seem to be in Hong Kong. The most exotic place where we have made our mark is Slovenia, where one of us now works as a lawyer.

In fact, a full one-third of the class eventually became lawyers, but many have since left big-name law firms to become in-house legal counsel for other companies.

Two lawyers made even sharper left turns - one is training to be a pastor and another left her high-flying career to give legal aid.

Almost half the class took scholarships - but even though most had completed their bonds, two remained with the organisations that sponsored their studies.

One of them is now the principal of the secondary school he attended. He couldn't attend the dinner because he had to fly to Xian in China to handpick the brightest students there for admission to his school - a thought which frightened the many mothers at the table.

I was amazed at the number of kids my classmates have had. The average fertility rate seemed to be three, and I had to hide my slight irritation at those who couldn't turn up because they couldn't find babysitters for the evening.

Still, I was glad that everyone, in general, turned out to be progressing very nicely with their families and careers.

And as we sat at a long table chattering away in small groups, I felt the years melt away, bringing us back to the pock-marked table we used to sit at in the old Bukit Batok canteen.

There's L. and V. over there struggling to finish their food. J. is stressing out over her homework, while A. and H. wait to be picked up by their drivers.

And sitting beside me, in our own little world, is my old high-school sweetheart J.

Ending up next to her at the reunion dinner table was an accident and it ended up being the highlight of my evening.

We were both in our first relationships back then. I was the nerdy guy always hanging out with the popular girls but J. was more special to me than any of them.

She had this incredible optimism and zest for life, and never held back on showering her affection on me or any of her friends. Yet, beneath the sweetness was a sting that she would reserve for people who had disappointed her or looked down on her.

Years later, a song by British band The Cure would perfectly describe her: 'When I see you sky as a kite, as high as I might, I can't get that high. The how you move, the way you burst the clouds, it makes me want to try.'

To me, she was the most lovable and loyal person in the world. Holding her hand, I always felt like we were two young adventurers off to explore the world.

We broke up after college and moved on with our lives. She married a doctor and now has four kids. It was for the best.

But sitting next to her at the table, sharing food and trading gentle scoldings, I couldn't help but think how differently things might have turned out these past 20 years.

In school, I sometimes paused to look at all of us together, trying to picture where we would be in 10 or 20 years. Now, at the other end of the time tunnel, I look back and wonder.

Would the 20 of us have met different people and done different jobs but still turned out to be happy? Would the many friendships we forged have stayed intact? Would K. have been there at the table with us?

On that rainy last night of October, I decided that in a parallel world where we were different beings with the same fates, I would have stayed with J.

We would not have fought over stupid ideals. I would have cherished her more, treated her better and we would have attended the reunion as husband and wife.

She would be her usual effervescent self, and I would be beside her, silently proud, as the song that she personifies reaches its happy conclusion.

'When I see you take the same sweet steps you used to take, I know I'll keep on holding you - my arms so tight, they'll never, never let you go.'

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This article was first published in The Sunday Times.