Friends

We make variety of friends throughout our life. There are school friends, college friends, engineering friends, company friends and so on. There is no end to this ramification list on different types of friends. But there is a certain category of friends who remain forever and sail with you through your good and bad times. It is as though you have some right over their life (and vice versa) and can ask or lend some help without following any kind of discipline/manners as one would normally do in case of others.

My school friends fall in the above mentioned category. Our friendship in many ways is like the old banyan tree. The roots of this friendship had been sown 15 yrs ago and are now like the long roots of the banyan spread under the ground. The strong trunk of banyan tree represents our solid bonding, common interests and hobbies over the years. The different branches represents us, each being different in certain ways but yet united as one. The most astonishing aspect is that after school, we have been in different colleges, working for different companies, then going to different universities for MS to USA, but yet coming back and taking shelter under the very same umbrella "Amche Pune" where our hearts reside happily.

One of the appreciating things in our group is the respectable distance we keep amongst ourselves. This is essential in any relationship as then we are not invading the other person's privacy, thus giving him the freedom he desires. Of course, we do talk about each other's good and bad points, but such gossips do occur only within our group. We derive our joy and pleasure from the smallest of things that life has to offer. As a consequence, we have formed a bagful of memories to cherish and remember throughout our life. It will be a herculean task to single out one memory and place it above the others.

Many people are of the opinion that the friends you make during your school time are the ones who remain with you till the end. I somehow agree and believe this viewpoint. One of the major reason is the time that is spent in a friendship by a person in his early years (before attaining maturity) as compared to the time he spends in the friendship in his latter years (after attaining maturity). In the former case, a person shows more willingness to compromise and change as compared to the latter. As a result, the friendship is allowed to grow more in the early phase. In the latter years, things like personal ego, principles, selfishness and many such other factors do creep in somehow and become the barriers of everlasting friendship in its inception phase itself. Distance and time are also the popular inhibiting factors of a good friendship that probably started in college days.

Note that the above analysis is based on the 80-20 rule (meaning that 20% exceptions do exist). Sometimes the best of friendship incubates during the college days and continues for life time. But such examples are in 20% category meaning very few as then the right set of people need to meet each other. It is like the meshing of gears - where the 2 gears need to have same tooth type and same pitch in order to mesh correctly (if you are a mechanical engineer, you may understand perfectly what I mean).

Many friends have come into my life and left footprints in my heart. I am happy for their lifepaths have crossed mine, but sad at the same time that they are no more with me. Hence some of these prints are now kinda hazy since time has taken us away from each other. But my school friends have left indelible footprints in my heart as I am sure that they will be there with me through all times, thick and thin.