Time went by and I hopped over from IIT to IIM. As to taking leave from IIT friends, we sadly and completely failed our motion picture ideals and a visit to Surd shop, which was incidently never owned by a Surd in my time at IIT, a brief, awkward hug and a shake of hands did it.
I had come to IIM full of noble intentions, determined to do my best, realize my potential, stuff of that sort. As such, building and maintaining a wide social circle wasn't exactly top most on my agenda. A friend or two, to borrow notes or discuss the finer points of Gaussian distribution governing stock returns (nobody will believe this in these days of free falling stock markets but back then we had a most romantic attachment to the theory) was the basic idea. However will power, of seeing the thing to the end is something that I have always found wanting in me and this occasion was no different. Soon I was thrown headlong in five irreversible friendships, with my co residents in the dorm. Considering that each of these aforesaid five guys were also saddled with five irreversible friendships, it made fifteen friendships in all. If you find the calculation taxing, use a calculator. Fifteen is a large number and one would think that we had nothing else to do but make friends. Yet as anybody who's gone through it and has also watched a few Hollywood movies of the right sort can tell you, the first year at IIM Ahmedabad is to academia what the US marines is to military training. One would also wonder that if six guys; three of whom were fat, three wore glasses, plus a fourth whom even glasses couldn't help, one who was going bald at 25, one who had been short ever since 15; to summarize, if six perfectly useless guys can generate so much warm friendship, why are we still having terrorist attacks? I think the world needs more friendships, particularly in early formative years.
Our common interests were: carrom, cricket and conversation. Well, there are other things but they don't start with a 'c' and will have to appear elsewhere. Carrom was our game, traffic was so heavy that the boards withered like cricket pitches do in India. Talking of Cricket; cricket is, well, cricket (I have become an expert in doing things in three, learning on the job you see) but the expertise resident in the dorm was extraordinary. The channel nine commentary team is no match to the group that had gathered. Conversation was mostly pointless, therefore highly entertaining and often indulged in post midnight. Now that the c's are done, lets move to other things. Can't keep important stuff out just because of some stupid alphabet. Studying together (yes, no use hiding that shame), movies, eating out (we had some impressive physiques to maintain and the mess food, though the best in Asia Pacific was simply inadequate), eating in, throwing water at random people passing the dorm, throwing water at each other (this had welcome hygiene consequences), singing songs raising the profile of our dormitory representative or simply singing songs in our cacophonous voices were other group activities that received our patronage.
There was depth of emotion, that's the easy bit. Which true relationship doesnt have it. What characterized these friendships was maturity, by a shared appreciation of living the small details, by a shared willingness for being children again. We were all adults, on the cusp of the final plunge in to the world of jobs and responsibilities (indeed most had had the first taste) and fully appreciated that this was our last chance of living freely. So, when we were dunking each other with water, or going for a cup of tea at four in the morning, or playing carrom for hours, it was with the knowledge that all this will soon be over. We lived every moment, knew it was great and knew it will be over. That to me is what made it special: often one doesnt know a great thing when one has it or isnt conscious of the fact that it will end, circumstances ripe for grief. No, this was satisfied happiness.
