This post has been written for a variety of reasons. But before that as a disclaimer, I would like to mention that this blog post is written after almost 9 months and it is also on a slightly emotional topic, so please ignore the grammar errors and the breakage in flow if any. Now, with that in place, I’ll get to the reasons of this post, one of my closest and most special friends had given the title “Unfamiliar acquaintances” for another topic, and I liked the theme, so here’s one from my end. There was also insistence from a few respected people (especially in this last one week) about my blogging again, and the flurry of events that have happened in the last couple weeks which keep reminding me of good old days and making me nostalgic, have resulted in this post becoming a reality. So, in case you are reading this post my friends, you’ll know that this one is dedicated to you.
The term acquaintance is used for people who we know by face, or just by name, but cannot actually put them in the category of friends, because of either our lack of time spent with them, or because the different interests or priorities in our life have ensured that we do not come close to them.
However, the acquaintances are first step of any possible friendship, just like any seed is a potential for a tree. What happens with time and events is what decides whether the once unknown acquaintanceship grows into friendship, just like the events like rain, soil and security, along with the much required element “time” would decide, whether the seed will get a chance to bloom into a beautiful tree.
Friends at School
Primary school is supposed to be the best time for making true friends, because the kids are innocent to be truthful, and there is no selfishness involved. The fact that people do not have a mask on helps, and of course I am bestowed with probably a lot of friendship luck to get the wonderful friends, who still await my visits to Ahmedabad and try to ensure that we spend some good-time together. Together, we still reminisce about our past, discussing the present or just speculate the possible events of our future lives.
Friends at College
However, another part of this story for me, started after my 12th, when I got admission in Nirma University. Being a student among hundreds of unknown acquaintances made me both excited me at the prospects of making so many new friends and even frightened me, since I was in an unknown region, out of my normal comfort zone. Nevertheless, starting with some acquaintances, I was bestowed with some friends for life, even at college. Guys who were a part of this can think of the special moments like placements and admissions, the quick canteen lunches and the fun and games we have all had. Those were some amazing days...
Friends at Work
They say that you make friends only in college and when you come to work, it is all professional. This means, the maximum transition you can have in work like is from an unknown person sitting on the opposite side of the desk, to a coworker, whose name you know and the maximum you would be made aware is the type of work and how office life is. And again, that is where, my life is an exception. Life sent me not only new acquaintances, but much closer friends, and at each level, I expected this to be last place to make new friends, and thankfully, life has proven otherwise.
I did not just get acquaintances or even friends at my work, I got my own local family. Of course we did not have formal relations like a father or mother, or a brother or sister, but the love and care, the friendship and trust and of course the useless, junk jokes and emotional fool talks we’ve shared are things that have made my current stint at work, the wonderful thing it is.
Some more Musing
If you metaphorically consider each friendship as a plant or a tree and the acquaintance as a seed, then I have had a wonderful garden of life. There are friendships which grew super-fast like normal plants, some acquaintances, which did not grow beyond the size of plain-grass and ultimately a bunch of other friendships, each of which took months if not years to root themselves in my life, and then one day all of a sudden, like the Chinese Bamboo, they grew rapidly, making the garden of life, the wonderful place it is.
I was talking about this to friend about the special rights that person has with me, owing to our “professional” friendship bond, when I realized that nothing changes in a relationship unless you want it to, and all my friends are the biggest proof of this statement. We have been together through thick and thin, through people going in different schools to people going in different streams, and even people going to different cities and states and still your friendship remains protected. The same holds true for my school friends, college friends, roommates and even with my close Company friends.
But that’s the funny thing called life, it just moves on. You want it to stop there, and keep enjoying the pleasures and the comfortable life you managed to have, stay where you are with the people you care about around you, but nature’s response to that feeling of yours is: the only thing constant is the change. Now with a new role at work and new people around me, life is once again taking the same twist. Getting to know new people and making new friendships is a phase of life we all always like to go through, but we know that saying “bye” someday is going to make life that much more empty for you. However as my parents would say,“People can come into your life, but only you can make them go”.
Final Verdict: (How can I miss writing this term? ;D )
Whether you change a place or the place changes you and ultimately, either you become a new person or new people always keep coming into your life, and so to all my friends out there,
THANKS FOR MAKING MY LIFE WORTHWHILE, and for all the other 7 billion people of the world, let us get to know each other better... :-)
