Friendship

Friend – A person whose likes and dislikes matches yours, a person who has the same point of view as you, or a person whom you want to be with you during you good and bad times. A friend is also the person, for whom you would be ready to give up everything in life. You would give up anything to see him happy; you would be there with him during his good or bad times. But the greatest thing that defines friendship/closeness between two people is the absence of expectation.

Where there is expectation, there is hurt when the other person falls short of your expectation. You expect you parents to get you a toy. You expect your friend to stand play with you. You expect your girlfriend to call you on your birthday. You expect your wife to prepare tea as soon as you get up. You expect your child to stand first in his/her class. You expect your children to support you once they are independent. The expectations a person can have is numerous, some of them are reasonable, but even reasonable expectations can lead to stained relationship between people.

Personally I have had very few friends in my life – until TAPMI. The reason for that being the regular transfers that my dad got due to the nature of his job. I had to change schools every 2-3 years. Since I was the only child in my house, I am a recluse. I do not get along freely with people; I require time to know people. These two reasons combined has resulted in a typical behavior developing in me due to which not many people like to be with me.

Even in my engineering, thought there were a lot of students, I had a handful of people whom I could call as close friends.

Come TAPMI, the things changed. There were friends – Associate Group friends, Core Group friends, T-Flank friends, System Forum Friends, TSG Friends, Systems Lab Friends, Pulsar Friends, Episode Friend, BrandScan Friend, Friends in my Gang, Friends from other Gangs, you name it and there was a friendship with every other guy in the college, be it from my batch or from the junior/senior batch.

The reason for it was the curriculum of TAPMI. While during your school days and graduation, the stress is on individual performance; in Management education the stress is on group work. There are groups for every activity in TAPMI, and so for the successful completion of the work you need to forge good relation with your teammates. You need to understand the other person and play along.

Two years ago – on 27th June 2003, I had joined TAPMI. In a matter of 22 months, I have learned a lot. As I look back from now, I have a lot of friends, on whom I can rely on. A lot of friends with whom I would love to stay in touch, I love to hear from.

There is a particular dialogue in the film “Dil Chahta Hai”, spoken by Akshay Khanna – “Our life is like a sea, and we are like boats. Each one having its own targets and equipments to meet them. Some of them meet by chance, stay together for a period to attain common goals, but after that they move on – To find newer goals.”

This is so true with friendship. If you look back in life, you will have more friends from the recent past than from your school days. Time flies, people move away, have different priorities in life and develop new tastes and friends group.

After TAPMI, life has brought me new friends, the Management Trainees who have joined along with me in my company. Thought I still have contacts with a lot of people from TAPMI, I am not sure as to how many of them will stand the test of time. There are a few who I am sure will stay in touch for a long time, but about others – Time will tell.