Making New Connections

 Of course, for a teacher, an obvious place to make connections is his/her students. And colleagues. The gang of ex-student friends keeps expanding, in my case, as I have more years under my belt (sometimes, it shows). 

But generally speaking, a sport can get you friends, or hobbies can. If you are online, or a blogger, you get invited into communities. I have made quite a few friends from a music group I joined a few years ago. If you write books, you have many readers, some of whom pop up unexpectedly. Ditto, if you write columns etc. Makes you feel like a celebrity at times! I have actually given autographs on my books- not as many as I would like to, though.😀

Travel is another way you get to meet people. I have met friends who are friends of friends, or spouses of friends. Sometimes had long conversations with them too. I also have parents of students who are friends online, though I haven't met all of them. Similarly, daughters/sons of friends too. All of these connections are enriching. I have met New Zealanders, Bangladeshis and Vietnamese in conference travel, and Cambodians, Japanese, and Koreans too, among others-Thais and Britishers, Indonesians for example.

Some friends are also global (USA, France, China, Sri Lanka, Austria, Australia...) and we have connected on fb regularly, and I have a window into their world. I know exactly what they think of Biden., Trump, or Trudeau, for example, and what their kids are up to (if they have kids). 

Amazing!

How to Make Friends

Look around you. Virtually everybody is a potential friend (or stranger-depends on how you look at them). So how do we make friends?

I can explain how I seem to make them. I already have many-cousins, playmates from childhood, hobby-mates, classmates from school, college, MBA class, Ph.D., and so on. So one way is to get an education-plenty of it. The upside is you will make lots of friends.

But you also have that funda about two or three degrees of separation. You know person A, he or she introduces you to B and C. You then have potential friends. Most ex-colleagues are also friends-Shahida, Bhagyalakshmi, Manasa, Murli, SP Kumar, Manoharan, TK Chatterjee, Anant Ram, Halve, Saleena, Jayanti, Lubna,  are some of them. So are ex-assistants or staff colleagues, like Saumya Sharma, Vinod Jadhav and Madhuri Helchel.

Former students who I meet are also among friends. With some, I am more like family, having visited them at home- Swapna (in Singapore), Vrinda and Pallavi in Delhi and Bangalore respectively, come to mind. Sirisha, Shraddha in Mumbai, and Padmapriya in Delhi also. Anupriya and Nidhi Kanungo have visited me at my place in Indore. I keep running into students everywhere on a regular basis, and each meeting is a potential friendship opportunity- particularly after they have forgotten their grades! Some, like Jogeswari and Abhinav, have helped me write cases about their companies, that I use regularly! Planned meetings, I have had with Shafique, Zargar, Divya Singh, Supriya Jain, Pragya Singh, Tosha Dubey, Abha Kulkarni, Khyati Jha, Meghna Sinha,... 

My wife has ex-students, many of whom are my friends now (Vaseem, Vittal). So is the case with my daughters' friends-some of them, at least- I am connected to them on fb.

My book has helped me make friends-I run into people who have read it, and strike up a conversation. Starting with Marketing Research, and moving on to less boring things (!).

My Hindi music group has resulted in my making lots of like-minded friends. It's a long list- Poonam, Subbu, Shiva (and his Mom), Usha, OP, Geeta, Indira, ..

Running a contest for DP Awards on fb has made me a lot of friends (and enemies who spit fire when they don't win!).

And I haven't even talked about Golf!