Friends are like diamonds always shining in a necklace of friendship

Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever. The journey of friendship is like that of a cruise ship captained by you sailing through an ocean. It picks up passengers on different ports just like you pick up friends in different stages of life – some in school, some in college, and some at  workplace. These friends stay with you throughout your life. Whether your ship is sailing in calm waters or rocking in rough weather, the all-weather friends stay by you to see you through the storm ensuring you reach the port safely.

The cruise journey touches a lot of ports and at each port, few friends embark and few disembark. The friends in school get left behind once you join college. The ones in college get left out once you join a job. And so the journey continues. Most of the time you try to stay in touch with them but the daily commitments to life hardly leaves any time for them.

Friends are like diamonds and this you realise in school

The first chapter on friendship starts the day you join a nursery school. With a Tom and Jerry school bag that carries a tiffin box and a water bottle, you step in the world of struggle to learn your first lessons.  A for Ananya, B for Bipasha, C for Chandrika, D for Daksh and F for friends, and with these little gems you start building a chain of friends. As you add the gems, it becomes a beautiful necklace of friends who are like diamonds.

The Stepping stone

Nursery happens to be a class where you learn to socialize with other kids and also get socially accepted by them. It’s not only about learning the alphabet but also about growing in society. The friend sharing the study bench with you becomes your first friend and slowly the whole class. You develop a liking for friends with similar tastes and start sharing tiffin with them. This is the first step towards building a long-lasting friendship with friends who will shine like diamonds. And remember diamonds are forever.

When I was growing up in school there was a tradition of sharing sweets on birthdays with the entire class. It was followed by paying a visit to all your teachers in different classes and offering sweets. The most memorable part of this exercise was that your best friend used to accompany you.

Fun with friends

As you grow up and move to higher classes the bond with friends grows stronger. Now they stick with you in school as well as after school. Whether it is going out and watching a movie at the cinema or having a pizza party, the fun element  used to multiply if all the friends were together. In school, the friend takes notes for you when you are absent and in case you have not scored well in exams, he vouches for you in front of your parents on how hard you studied.

For girls, the best friend is like their secret diary. There are an umpteen number of secrets you share with her right from the boy on whom you had a crush to your daily fights with mom to the dress you want to wear on your first date. So much is the importance of this friend who is like a diamond for you that she not only decides the dress you will wear on your birthday but also the guest list.

As you move to college for higher studies a lot of friends move out of your radar. Some move to different cities while some move to different colleges. It’s like few passengers disembarking from the cruise ship captained by you. On the other hand,  new ones are waiting on the port to embark on a new journey with you.

College friends are like diamonds forever

The day you land in a college you feel like entering a new world. A world of freedom that is not constrained by a uniform or a class assembly. As a result you are at will to bunk classes and spend the entire day at the canteen. It’s here that you meet new friends, the ones who probably will become your life-long friends.

However, making friends in college is not as simple as the ones you made in a nursery or primary school. The friends have to pass the litmus test of trust and sincerity. Now you have a mind of your own. It’s for this reason that the friends you make in 1^st year of college are not the same ones who are in the final year with few exceptions.

The beautiful memories of time spent with college friends are the ones that stay with you lifelong. Bunking classes and going out for a movie; spending time in college canteen with friends with unlimited cups of tea; attending classes to impress the one on whom you have a crush was all part of the college curriculum. The outcome of this chemistry experiment of mixing alkalised fun with acidic studies is that it produced some of the best friends in life. These are friends who are like diamonds still shining in your life.

Enter the world of struggle

After getting professional degrees from college you finally land up in a job. You enter a world of competition where each person is running a race trying to keep ahead of the pack. While trying to gain a foothold some help you get onto firmer ground and these ultimately become your office friends who are like diamonds.

Office friends are fun! You meet them in the office daily and lunch becomes your common ground to open your heart. The tea stall outside the office complex becomes the place to gossip. Your friends give you solutions to the problems you are facing with your boss over a glass of tea. Having drinks in a pub in the evening allows you to break new grounds with your boss. On the other hand, the Car-o-bar (tailgate parties) in the dark alleys behind the office complex helps you discover friends with similar tastes.

The Social media helps you rediscover old friends

WhatsApp and other social media have helped you in re-discovering school friends who somewhere went out of your radar. A group has been created and one by one most of them are back. On one particular day, one of the friend uploads a school photo of class 8^th and it becomes nostalgia for everyone. A school reunion has been planned and most of them have said yes to it to relive the memories and also to meet the one on whom you had a crush.

One of the innermost friend circles is made up of the ones who went to college with you. This group is like an extended family with spouses being a part of it. The Diwali card parties are incomplete without them and meeting them once a month is a routine.

The office friends are a larger group. You meet all of them regularly even though you have moved out of the company for better prospects. These friends understand your professional ambitions and help you get a foothold in a new setup where they have moved.

So whether it is school or college or office friend just remember that har ek friend zuroori hota hai as every friend is like a diamond. Cheers to a long-lasting friendship!

You can enjoy reading more such stories on my blog. Click on the link below:

The Great Expectations: falling in love with childhood once again

The Cuckoo’s Nest: Getting the young ones ready to fly in the sky