Ending a relationship.

It was not very long back during my stay in the US that I toyed with the idea of "relationships coming to an end". Given my life back in India, I did go from one place to another, one school to another, one tuition class to another. But none of these so called "relocations" ever entailed me to end a relationship with old friends, while starting to make some new ones.

Like for example, my first friends' circle was with my people from Tata Colony. Amazing friends they all are. Ofcourse, I have not spoken to some of them in more than five years now. But still, they ARE my friends! Same with people from school. And then my friends' circle in BTS-MTS (some really characterbuilding friendships I had). The Junior college junta, and the most recent VESIT public. All of these are well in the past, but I never really counted them out of my friends list! Although I am pretty sure I might never see or even hear from many of them ever again!


And most of these friendships were gems for me. Everyone of them taught me something, helped me grow various dimensions of my personality and the people were a blast to hang out with. I play the guitar thanks to Naval, I excel in studies thanks to all those nerd friends at BTS-MTS, I developed good leadership skills thanks to people in school, I was good at most sports in Tata colony thanks to my friends there, I developed a great sense of humor thanks to people in VESIT, and the list could keep continuing if I thought more about it.

So there are three questions that arise in front of me here. The first is, are all those beutiful relationships over?? Am I simply in denial when I still hope that they will resurface later in my life again and I can relive their glory?? The second question is, if these friendships were such golden phases, why haven't I ever tried to hold these things back? What have I ever done to make sure I don't lose track of all this affection that people showed for me in the past? And lastly, assuming the age old fact that good things never last forever, even if these relationships had to end for any particular and justified reasons, there is no good reason for them to end so abruptly!!!

All this thinking has only led me to the conclusion that I need to start ending my relationships gracefully, before they drown into the deep lull of nothingness over time.

Group Dynamics 101

This weekend I had a very involved discussion with Rishi about the movie Rang De Basanti. Cool movie and all that, but I really liked what he had to say about the movie. And the biggest thing that we agreed upon was the brilliant group dynamics between the five main characters of the movie. And that got me thinking, what really is the main constituent of such brilliant, life changing and life-long lasting friendship circles???

Rishi did bring it to my notice that the kind of relationship those guys in the movie shared was indeed very similar to what Kunal, Bhushan, Vidya and Rishi shared during their undergrad years. Since then, I have been trying to find that little connection that he was so passionately talking about. I wondered what made both of these groups of friends so special. Comparing the two groups and my current group of friends, I realized what the most important constituent of brilliant group dynamics is. Its a VERY SWEET GIRL.

Vidya is no doubt the "very sweet girl" in Rishi's group and the character played by Soha Ali Khan was the same in Rang De Basanti's group of people. And the lack of a group feeling in my current group is explained by the absence of any such "very sweet girl". (Please don't get me wrong on this. What I say is supposed to be a very subjective opinion, and the subject is "my thinking". It may not be the truth, and is most definitely not the whole complete picture.) I am not very sure how to define a phenomenon like "a very sweet girl". But looking at the people I have met in life, the people whom I recognize as "very sweet girls" have always built a strong bond of friendship within their groups. Sandhya Rao is one such person. I remember how she dominated the attention of all her friends in my sister's group and really held it together. Nithya from Junior college was also another such person, very vibrant, spontaneous, and full of life. Each of these persons has convinced me to believe that to have a great friends' circle, you need to find the right girl to start off with. Thats what determines the winning combination.