F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Kapil,Chakri,Raak,Vig,Kau,Vis,Sandeep,Esha,Asawari,Abhishek...This one's for you!

When we were asked to introduce ourselves, I tried my level best to remember all the names. I have never been good at first times, be it names, routes or anything academic. I didn’t know if I was the only one scared to death that I had been put in a concentration camp. I, a person who hates Computer Science (being a Computer Science graduate, that doesn’t help much!) was imagining myself spending days and nights in office and coding. Oh no!

That was the first of July, 2008. Has it been 3 years already? All those excuses we looked for just to get away from work gave me friends who are one of the dearest I have had till date.

We were still divided into small groups of college buddies, not quite open to behaving like a group. The first "bonding factor" was the Theme Day when we decided to dress up as a picnic troupe. The ones who forgot the dress code just rolled up their sleeves and folded their trousers. Not really a "picnic-y" look for those who wore formals, but nevertheless, we took lots of pictures. Then came the Resort trip, which was the first and the last we've had as far as my stay here goes. That was fun too; we had games, dance floor, some kind of waterfall and nice pieces of entertainment now and then. More pictures for the new joinees!

When it came to work, it was far from fun. All those lengthy classroom sessions, practice sessions, assignments, grading, the fear of being in the "Red Zone" etc. just ate up 2 months of training. By this time, I did manage to know everyone's names as we were made to do few assignments in groups, though all of them weren't exactly helping me make friends. Reason? Don't ask! Anyway, that's history now. We did come close as a group, thanks to good old Skype. I don’t know what I would have done without that orange window blinking on my taskbar, whether it was to discuss some random topic, complain about work, pull someone’s leg or plan a trip, treat or birthday celebration.

We had just two trips out of which the first one supposed to be a rainy day hill station spree turned out to be more of basking in the scorching summer sun and clicking lots of snaps (again!) to show our Orkut friends how much ‘fun’ we had! We did get a few nice ones though (the Roadies one!). We had to console ourselves by playing dumb charades in the car and yes, how can I forget the lame scary house in that amusement centre? The second trip came up much later and it was- well I’d say ‘better’ is an understatement even without comparing it to the first one.

I remember our first ‘surprise’ birthday celebration. Of course, the surprise was spoilt just minutes before getting the cake, which is why we decided we wouldn’t give the next guy a chance to even guess we were celebrating his birthday. We did it on the eve of his birthday and dragged him to give us a treat. Even with the rising prices, the birthday treat budget per person has been 3000 INR since then. As it is for any group event, there were difficulties getting all the people to be present. I can't help but smile when I recall the concept of dependencies (E.g. X wouldn’t come if Y wasn’t coming) being related to RDS (Rate Determining Step in Chemistry). We had RDS-1, RDS-2 and an independent reaction too. Even with all these hurdles, we’d usually manage a 90-95% attendance with a venue matching the choice of almost everyone. I so looked forward to these treats. There’s no other way to say that I’ll really miss them! As for my birthdays, I had the most memorable ones in the last 3 years. I can’t thank my friends enough for making them so special. And of course, how can I forget to mention our coffee sessions?!! I never loved coffee till I had these 30 minutes of cribbing, arguments, leg pulling, wrong goals and peace treaties made and broken.

All these moments were taken for granted till I realized how much they helped me survive critical phases in my life. I never had a gang of friends in college. I wonder how much better it’d have been if I had such a group, or would I really have found such people there?

Skype has been blocked now. With the number of farewell treats taking over birthday treats and the participants reducing at the coffee table, I opened my Spark Chat Window today. It has three groups- Friends, Team and Work. I deleted yet another name from the first group. There’s just one left now. I’ll have to delete that too after a month. I might as well delete the entire group.