Overvaluation and Undervaluation

 Some things we undervalue (my list- you can beat me up if you don't agree)

1. A smile.. or humour, in general. 

2. Children, by imposing our ideas on them

3. A cup of coffee or tea from the neighbourhood cafe/darshini/vendor

4. Beautiful people (not skin) from our immediate connects- friends, cousins, colleagues, other non-celebrities

To complete the piece, we overvalue

1. Speeches, most of which are insincere.

2. Adults

3. Fancy stuff, branded goods of whatever category..

4. Cricketers, film stars, celebs of whatever field (except academia? just kidding!)

I will stop here for now, for fear of being badly beaten up!

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!

Positive People

These, by my definition, are people who spread a positive vibe, most of the time. It has little to do with their condition at the time, or their financial status, or age etc..may be, kids are a great example, because most of them will give you positive vibes.

Not so adults. Why? Maybe we are obsessed with our work or home pressures, career progression, or an unsatisfying job (assuming we work for someone). But then, you see lots of people who are generally able to smile through anything, and even laugh at themselves and life.

No idea how they do it, but these kinds of people are a joy to behold and be with. In films too, my favourites were the happy-go-lucky people (yes, I know they were acting) who exhibited a devil-may-care attitude, or a mischievous demeanour, in a nice way. Dev Anand comes to mind (his autobiography is titled Romancing with Life), and so do Shammi Kapoor and Kishore Kumar. And Madhubala in many of her roles.