On Friendship

 You can be friends with anyone you come across. Then how come we don't? There are friends we do have from every stage of life. This is an attempt to classify or figure out how I became friends with many of my friends, starting from my childhood.

Neighbours were friends- Talpallikars, a family who lived next door in Bellampalli, A.P., for example. We and all their kids became friends. Also those we played with in our club, being from the same company. Bridge, Badminton, music were other interests that brought us together. Friends from school (residential in my case), college- many of whom have remained thick pals-two of them are Golfers too. From my MBA, and from Ph.D. days abroad -USA. Many are in touch, thanks to social media and email.

Colleagues from office- I met Muthu while working with a Market Research firm, and we still play Golf. Colleagues in my teaching stints at IIM Lucknow, IIM K, IIM Indore, PESIT, IFIM (recently reconnected with a couple of them), VJIM and Kirloskar Institute. IMT Nagpur and Ghaziabad too, whom I keep meeting off and on. 

Student friends are a very special category, close to my heart. I have alum/ex-student friends from almost every institution I have been in. Feels great to share their life stories when we catch up, or online if that does not happen. I have been enriched by all their interactions, and it feels like I am a billionaire. Some of my wife's students too became my friends over the years.

My doctoral students have also become good friends due to our prolonged association, and we do meet professionally at conferences, etc. I have also met a few international academics who are friends online. Made a couple of author friends too, because I read their books and wrote reviews on my blog. Devapriya Roy and Usha Narayanan (both authors) come to mind. 

Of course, brother's friends and sister's friends also became my friends in many cases. 

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!