Friendships

I, V, M. But again, don't improvise on this, because in January, I felt like welcome to simplify the show that will leave you. But this actually reminded me of... Have you started really?

Yeah, this is it too. What is the second half that I had finished, also. I thought it was very pause. Now, I thought you were telling at night, to start like that and you're going back again.

It's all part of it. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is part of it. If you see a simplified host 45 Lee and guiltily slinking off somewhere, it usually means that someone has approached that simplified host.

And told him that simplified has actually given him some knowledge. So that's like, that's how it works. Yeah. What you said, Narayan, about leaving it in person condition, reminded me of my team, like one panel suddenly conked off and like just went blank.

So I called obviously the LG guy. He came and it's like, OK, cool. Like he's been a reparity, took it off the wall. He unscrewed everything.

He literally looked at it, and then he screwed everything back. And he put it back. I'm like, you fixed it. He's like, no, no, this is not fixable.

Like I've just come to give you that information. I wasted one hour of your time to give you exactly nothing. Which seems like pretty much what you do here. So I'm just sure it's to know that it is OK to be unscrewed.

We unscrew things. We screw things. And at the end of it, it's really nice right now. We screwed up as well.

There is this play called the importance of being earnest by Oscar. In that, there is a line. It's something like this. Ignorance is like an exotic bloom.

One touch of knowledge and the bloom is gone or something. And so on. No, no, no, no. It's a thing of beauty ignorance, right?

So you don't want it to go. Yeah. Of course, not too many people know of the slightly lesser nonplay, the importance of being Oscar, which was written by Ernest Hemingman. But this is another story called, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That said, my important point is this. Yeah.

So there is a story about the Buddha, right? So the Buddha was going one day through a village. And there was, you know, so the villagers welcomed him. And then they told him, yeah, Buddha was, you know, Buddha was being Buddha very calm.

They said, we have a little sort of grove here, where the children used to play. But it's now inhabited by poisonous snake, a cobra, who keeps hissing and biting people and killing them. So all the children are terrified of playing there. So the Buddha says, you know, let me go and talk to the snake.

So he goes and he's divine, right? And the presence of his divinity, the snake, prostate himself. I mean, I don't know because they don't stand up in any way. But whatever, you know, he sort of says that, oh, Lord, I will, you know, so the Buddha says that, you know, please don't kill people.

Don't hurt them. So he says, yes. And then after many months, the Buddha's back in that area. And this time he sees that children are indeed playing in that grove and they are kicking something around.

Goes there and sees the finds that snake, that same snake which was the terror of the neighborhood, now being mercilessly kicked around his back to the bruise. So Buddha is overcome with compassion. He says, what happened? Why are you like this?

This is no Lord. He was told me not to bite. So I start biting and now everyone kicks me around. So Buddha says, I told you not to kill anyone.

It doesn't mean you can't, he's sent threatened people. So you can continuously do that. So to sort of, my point is this, it's absolutely admirable to be ignorant and preserve that ignorance. But it's absolutely not necessary to let other people know that you are ignorant.

So that's where simplified comes in. Oh, this is really intro. Okay. Oh, yeah.

And then the snake got fired from the ceiling. Yeah. Yeah. For that one listener who texted Chuck and said that, why is the recording not out on Monday?

This is what you came for. Yeah. Yeah, we missed one episode. So sorry to all the people, I guess who.

We should mention the other friend who met you guys in real life. Yeah, we talk about that. We have another episode for that. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So we are going to talk apparently about friendship. Yes. So today's topic is friendship.

Yeah, we need to introduction. Right. We need to. Yeah.

I want you guys to sort of think about the most unlikely friendships you've formed. And just describe that or whatever you can say about that unlikely friendship. How it formed and how? I'll go first.

Oh, yes. Why do you introduce yourself as well? Yeah. Yeah.

A good friendly night. You know, to be fair, to be fair to the ten people who listen to Simplified, I sometimes get the vibe. I would. So.

So one day one guy lines up in my factory and he is interestingly looking for a Narendra. But I learned later that that's not me. So he comes, he asked me, I even Narendra, I said yes. And then he starts talking to me like a long lost friend and starts telling me about you know, the taking people's name and telling me about whose friend he is.

And I have absolutely no clue. Now my memory of names and faces is terrible. So I have no choice. I have to just go along with.

So I pretend that I know everything that he's everyone that he's talking about. And I say come in and have a cup of tea. We say it. No, I'm about 15 minutes.

He asked me for the name of my company and he says, Oh shit, this is not the place I was. I said, Okay, okay, that that places him. So he goes to the other place. And by that time, okay, we've already like, you know, the bonds of friends.

So he finishes whatever work he had with that other guy. And then it comes back here. And he is my friend for a really long time. And then like, not recently about a few years ago, he passed away.

So that's that's the end of that. Wow. For all that period, he was a really interesting guy. I didn't know him from Adam.

And he just come hang out, tell me the most incredible tales and just buzz off. No, it sounds a lot like you. We met randomly you came, we met because you came looking for somebody else. I mean, every time he meets, you say some random tales and then you go, Oh, are you seeing yourself in not that kind of episode?

Passing away part. I hope that doesn't happen for a long but yeah, the wrong episode for that. Okay, I'll go next. My first hostel roommate was kind of a nice guy and later I realized that or rather he told me that he used to sell or transport drugs across a bridge in Kuchind.

And at that point of time, I was a poor little sheltered boy and I was absolutely terrified that this was like shit, like what's happening as if I was scared going to a hostel and things like that. But the fact of the matter was the guy was a very, very nice guy. He actually like came from a background that I didn't he obviously had a way of thinking and all that which I mean, it's the typical kind of, you know, person who my social circle wouldn't have come in contact with and I know how privileged that makes me sound, but he'd failed 10th or something a couple of times, but we ended up becoming pretty decent friends for that first year. And after that, I think he either dropped out or been somewhere else, haven't been in touch since 2000.

You never met anyone who's filled their boards. No, man, that's about it. Like I think that was if you're told me that one of my, I mean, I would say best friends, but I'd be pretty close to somebody who was doing all the things that he did a year before college. I mean, I think that's the thing in 12th only I'll sit and work at a fair restaurant, but yeah, life opens up experience.

Maybe there's something philosophical about it. I will think about that while you guys give me your answer. Well, I can go here. I mean, I'll probably, I mean, it's the, I wouldn't say unlike least, but the strangest reason I kind of formed a friendship, I mean, would strange as well as like a little, a little, what do you say, I mean, a little sanctimonious, I guess in my own way, where just before I was going to go to college in a symbiosis MBA in Puna, I was like, so we were all part of that group and we had all gotten in and there was one, I'd created a Facebook group where basically everybody came in and we were all sharing about how we were getting into our processes and all the coordination stuff, whatever is there.

And there was like an introduction thread, right? And just before the college, they had actually sent us a mail saying that you have a choice to choose your roommate. Otherwise, it'll be randomly allotted to you. If both roommates can mail the admin office and your roommates can be, I mean, selected, otherwise they'll be randomly allotted to you.

Now here is where I came in. I was like, I didn't want to be, I didn't want to get stuck with someone who is either an idiot or is someone who is like just out there in whatever way. And I, this was also very, very hard standards, but it did lead to a good thing eventually where what I saw was introducing the thread that we had. And I just went through that and anybody who wrote full sentences in English was the first person I caught.

And that was my future roommate who he just basically wrote in full sentences rather than writing like acrotim and shit pronunciation and whatever else. And then afterwards, I texted him and I was like, are you vegetarian? He's like, yes, do you smoke? He's like, no, I was like, let's go roommates.

So then we gave our application. Like we had no idea who the other person is whatsoever. But we were the only people in the world batch who chose to be with each other. Everyone else got randomly allotted.

So yeah, that is, that guy who is a very good friend of mine now. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the origin story of how Shlikith became a Bangalore landlord.

And then I was like, I think Bangalore was at two Nisha joke. I don't know what you mean. Oh, you haven't been following peak Bangalore on Twitter then because they share screenshots of people who get rejected from by landlords because in Bangalore, you have to apparently say which company you work for and things like some people even ask for things like that. So yeah, so one screenshot doing the rounds right now is now I worked in Cisco.

This person is in Google. There's another thing we have all 1.5 years and the person writes back saying, sorry, you didn't need the qualification center or something like that. What would you mean? So anyway, like, can you write full sentences are you?

I mean, I don't know. What else can you judge on at this point? Like you have nothing else to go by. So I said full sentences might be a good filtering mechanism.

So the test that you ran or? Yeah, it's something I ran where I reached out to him and I said, do you want to be roommates? And he was like, yeah, that's good. Later on, I was realized his ulterior motive was he wanted his at the time and I can say that there's now they've been married for 10 years, but his girlfriend at the time, now his wife had a very specific criteria for him to get a roommate.

She wanted him to have a roommate who had a girlfriend because at that time she was quite possessive and she was like, if there you have a single roommate, he will lead you a straight. Oh, yeah. Wow. All these non-engineering college funders.

Yeah, yeah. So she was very happy that I was the roommate because I was at that time had a girlfriend. So it was quite a quite a unique set of parameters that we shot listed each other on. This is actually much more intense than how most of the arranged marriages used to work back in the past.

Yeah, most of the unlikeliest friendships actually like when I tell people I've met in the day, like how can you make friends of the internet? But it remains the fact that all the time. There's another way to experience. There's another way to do that.

I don't think so. Yeah, there's a shop. You could make a friendship on awkward. Yeah.

No, no, but like I feel like three of you have spoken so I'll break the format a little bit and probably the most unlikeliest friendship that I made was remade was with my dad when I turned probably close to the course. Oh, sweet. Yeah, I mean, which is like because he used to be a very, very like big discipline in growing up and also like short-tempered and. Yeah, I'll quickly plug the latest episode of scene in the unseen at clocks in at some seven and a half hours not for the faint hearted.

Yeah. So it's about this very thing, right? It's about this very thing. So you are only the rest of the Indian man.

It's very nicely brought out by the host, Nikhil Tanajar who talks about this and you are very lucky that you are able to, you know, he strike that friendship and so here I read somewhere where probably Stephen Pinkar or something I don't remember back in the analysis of history. There are three kinds of relationships, right? So one is what's called reciprocity. Reciprocity is the good proko.

It's not a friendship thing. It's like I give you money, you give me gold. So that kind of thing, you know, that relationship customer, you know, transactional relationship. One is a dominance relationship like a father and son or a boss and a subordinate, right?

So there are things you are not able to discuss because of the dominance relationship. And the third one is what he calls communalism, which is where you are equal. It's egalitarian. So neither of you has authority or the other and there is no expectation either.

So, you know, if you're friends, then the obligation, then the legal obligation for either of us to do or not do something. So what Stephen Pinkar or whoever it was who wrote that was saying was that if you mix these relationships, it usually ends up in a disaster. So if you're in a dominance relationship and you start acting like you're in a reciprocity or this thing or any of the three. But the one exception that I think which converts very beautifully from a dominance relationship into a communal relationship is the father and son or parent-child relationship.

When you grow up, there is a transition very hard to know when that transition happens. And what Nikhil Tanajah, the host on scene and scene was saying is that for many people, it never happens and that's really sad. No, I mean, I think it's a bunch of things that for it to happen, one is obviously that you need people to continue growing up even when they're older. Like a lot of people tend to become more narrow-minded.

But I was lucky enough to have a father who wants to continually improve, which is amazing. Second is also like coincidence of circumstance. By what you have having a child, he was forced to spend time together because you need to support system just when you have a big time. So then the mix of the two I think coming together was something of a coincidence.

But I guess it worked so. Yeah, that's nice to see you doing things like the podcast with your dad and stuff like that. That's quite nice. That was a roller coaster of emotions to the four answers.

It was so nice and deep. So friendship can be there too. And to be on the other side. So I know a couple of people who are stuck in a set of very bad friends.

So here's what I mean by bad friends. They are roughly my age. They are among friends who are continuously setting standards for each other and chasing pretty much unachievable goals because it's absolutely not on to a lot of you. And a lot of misery is ensuring, at least with the person I know.

And he's not able to snap out of it. So that's another thing. You need to at some point of time, you need. So there is this funda by this lady named Paramika Boragain who was a guest on scene and scene whose funda was Boramika.

It is her funda is that life is too short. And if someone is not the company of a person does not leave you happier or richer in experience or in any way, it's just no point continuing. That's just step up. It's just a great point.

There are two aspects that come out there I wanted to talk about. First just referencing the previous conversation. I think a very close friend of all of us. And I think one thing I discovered is not just a friendship relationship with your parents or your elders in some way, but also friendships that go across age ranges.

There's two examples of people, one of course, Narin, yourself, but also friend of the podcast and Tony's cohost on bits and pieces Mohan, who was at one point. I remember this because I was in my early to mid 20s when I met him and we went to his, I think Chuck and I had gone to his house and initially we were sitting there sitting at some uncle's place where he was sitting very disciplined and waiting for water and all that stuff. And then afterwards he had this brilliant knack which I had never encountered before in my life at least of an older person just completely putting it to you at ease and making you feel so comfortable as a friend. Like and having an older friend doesn't just come from like, okay, being able to put someone at ease.

I think you break it down further. One part which you said which is about the ability to actually say that, you know what? My age is not like making me better than you or my age is not making me knowledgeable that you and what you can say of any have value and I'm excited by your sliver of experience that you are going to share. And the other aspect being also that like, you know, it's almost like he was also in a space where he was like, you know, I want to share all this with you and I don't see that you are this younger person or someone else.

You are a mature and intelligent person in your own right and you will have something great to share with me. And that was something that I think it's something I still to this day to like whenever I'm trying to be sanctimonious or like to a pity about stuff. I just keep trying to put that into my experience saying that, hey, man, it's almost like what would Mohan do. It's a great angle there.

And the second thing that I wanted to point out which you talked about, which was about the whole, I mean, that the whole, I would call it the toxic friendship loop in some way where you have like, I mean, I have been part of these things where and I would obviously don't want to name any situations or names, but just a friendship loop which is governed or fed by either boastfulness of achievement or a series of one, one upmanship, right? Where I have one this battle and you have one that battle and I have one this battle versus like that kind of equation which happens, which is actually pretty common in India because it's all about like, oh, how far of the social, economic, financial, whatever ladder that you've climbed and how well can you showcase educational ladder as well. So it's just that one upmanship that I mean, what it does is like some people really, I see some people really thriving in those kind of friendships, but what I feel personally, what I've experienced over time is like they are exhausting because you will eventually lose at things. And it's an absolute and a friendship is no place to lose really.

I mean, it's just a place to come to like, unwind and relax and have a good time and share and learn and grow. Right versus this whole, I get the fleeting joy of winning and then the fear of having myself from the next potential loss. Bigger thanks for describing Twitter. So the first point, no, it's not about just age, I think.

So while that example of Mohan is great, but I think like even I'm taking some of my best friends apart from the three of us. And it's always like, this is sort of leveling right in some sense. Like even when I talk to like, I want to use that example of Mohan and age that you said and I like to say, Bertie and music. Yeah, even though he is somebody who is so knowledgeable about music and can run circles around you with respect to music knowledge, I don't think he ever really, he never really uses that as a point for one upmanship in a conversation.

And I think this is not to glorify Mohan or Bertie, but I think any less, I think the basis of any, that's a basis of friendship in some sense. Where you were able to just talk to each other as peers with nothing to guard or say, okay, I see going to say that or something like that. That makes sense. I think that's what we were trying to get to.

You don't want that to become a dominance relationship. Yeah, exactly. I think it goes back to what you're saying, the dominance relation. I always thought that way.

I think you can only be friends with somebody who you can. I think in school, we had these sort of heuristics that you can only be friends with somebody who can say a gali to or something like that. Because now you know what you're doing. I remember, there was a saying that used to be an advertising at one point that you can be friends with somebody and advertising only if you bitch about the common client together.

It could even be like you and your client. You and your client can become friends only if you bitch about the CMO together. There were these sayings like this. It's kind of interesting.

All of these are about coming to the same level so that it's almost like some pretension or something is white there so that you guys can just talk as humans. Yeah, it reminds me of one of the Buddha's books where one of the characters I don't remember possibly Gasi Fignatul but I knew. And striking up a friendship with a female. I either Gasi or someone may have.

And the conversation is he was saying argument say is the place for the place for the man. Gasi said that he didn't like rats and the girl said she didn't like rats either. And then the guy said he didn't like bats either and the feeling was reciprocated by the female. She said she didn't like bats either.

What are the subject of catch? They were far more like they liked both like catch. And that was the basis of a sound friendship. That's the catch.

So there's just on this point there is a dating app or at least there used to be a dating app called Haters which actually connects people on the basis of things they hate. This is what you're talking about over here which is you are likely to be friends with somebody if you hate a comment. But I think something like that is something that comes up in conversation rather than being the sole basis of a relationship. Imagine a marriage being formed on the basis of your common hatred for I don't know like man you knighted or something.

I don't know what people would have put up in a profile like what would you proudly claim to be a hater of. If you had to make that your entire identity. Oh wait I'm describing Twitter again. Yes.

One aspect of friendship which I've discovered is quite interesting is that I have a theory and this is something that I have put on. I'm sure someone must have expounded more eloquently about this somewhere else. But I have discovered that I have become friends with people or at least like struck up like good friendships with people who in other circumstances I would have never become friends with. And what I discovered here is that I think the circumstances and the tenor of what a friendship like I think friendships have a certain tenor or a certain rhythm that they get sick to from which is set by the initial meeting and the context of what that friendship is built on and all that stuff.

And that tenor actually dictates how a friendship is going to pan out. And what that does is I feel therefore in the right circumstances pretty much any person can be friends with any person. If they are given the right circumstances. In the right circumstances.

People with almost no overlapping interests. I mean obviously it's easier for people with a lot of overlapping interests to get together and talk and that's what happens most of the time. But I've seen far too many examples of people with not really having any overlapping interests. People getting together.

Like you said like people who match with each other on the basis of things they hate. I think it's also equally likely but it's also quite likely for people who are on opposite ends of the issue because they are having a spirited argument to actually become friends over it. Come together over it. Yeah.

So I feel that that particular context is so important for how people can get together. And it also sets a tone of saying that you know when you feel like there is a certain person you just kind of going in a slightly opposite direction to what I don't know who's the person you were just saying about like pick your friends. I mean don't want to bring the toxic friends in my life. Who are you talking about?

No you just talked about earlier you were talking about this one person who said Jana they are something. Yeah. Yeah. I feel if on a slightly tangential note if you were to the other side of the coin is because it becomes so difficult to make new friendships sometimes and you're sometimes too unnecessarily selective about who you think can become a friend or not.

Yeah. I think you may want to it actually merits having a little bit of patience in giving people a shot even beyond when you feel like they are the type who will bore you. Right. Yeah.

And that can actually lead to a very decent friendship. I have a couple of friends who have come that way and like I actually cherish them because we kind of went through that over came that hump and now are actually decent friends because we gave each other a shot beyond what we have what I would have normally done. You gave it to the shot at the hump. Well done.

Not sure. Yeah. It's pregnant with me. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean basically that's literally why it's easier to make friends is when you're younger and harder to do it when you're older. Yeah.

Structure inevitably leads to sort of more conversations and stuff. So I'm guessing at some point in time you're teacher would have mandated that you sit with X person in the ring class and although you probably like never spoke to each other before that like after one month when you change since you actually sort of have become at least you feel slight fondness for that person. Just by sure. Routine.

In another way in which this happens is like not necessarily office like commute people who take the same train or same bus. Oh, yes. Yeah. Into the way.

So I mean basically it's a question of if you don't have any other choice you automatically will become friends with whoever is around you. Whereas when you get older apart from office you don't have to be those opportunities. Like we wouldn't all four of us wouldn't and out like this if we didn't have a podcast to record. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't mean that like we don't like like like each other. I think it's just that like you know you have your own lives and routines to get on with and then even if you're not. Yeah.

So imagine if imagine if instead of the four of us coming together regularly every week it was for random post that needed to come together then it. Yeah. That's suppose Abid Doshi says today you have to do a podcast with X person to carry on your school. You're certainly fine.

You're still running our show with. Yeah. I mean they would have come in here with zero prep. Because it's a level of comfort right that we can sort of build something from nothing having done this for a long experience.

Yeah. You bring up a good point on that which also I feel is an important aspect. I think the one thing that really feels friendships and like I've seen like people who are super compatible and would be really good friends like feed away. And like people who are not like who are acquaintances actually stick on for longer friendships is is precisely what you just referenced like the four of us coming together to do this podcast right.

And these are what are rituals right like you have rituals for your friendship like you have any kind of doesn't need to be a scheduled podcast or a scheduled appointment where you go and talk. But even if you have a ritual of having a conversation at a specific point of time or meeting up or going and doing like I mean going and going and going and playing a sport together or going and playing a sport together or whatever that ritual may be. I think that that regularity which which breaks the breaks that this thing of oh I'd rather take a range check right now versus like this is something I do at this particular point. What feeds friendships and kind of keeps them going and that's essential like for a lot of friendships you kind of keep sustaining in somewhere.

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That's me Monday to Friday Saturday Sunday I'm without kids. Me chaps and celebs you'll never meet traffic jams on streets and people from all professions. Every one day I go live with the show ask me anything AMA you follow the questions I call them better than a Mumbai chad ri. I even host a panel discussion called Cock and Bull where we dive into current affairs and wonder why anyone even cares at all.

And Friday releases are always surprise episodes for you all. So tune into Sidel says on YouTube and all audio streaming platforms. Welcome back your forecast delivery status is now being fulfilled. Yeah and the harder that is to do I think that is a theory I don't have an example right now.

I'm assuming the deeper the friendship will be. For example to get together let's face it we all like each other but to get online once in two weeks and to do this is not very difficult for us as such. On the other hand if say because when I said that every Thursday we need to go to exactly this gig or something there's a little more physical effort over there. And now imagine as we get older planes different cities maybe even in different countries.

I know people who make it a point to meet up once every couple of years or so Mohand himself is a great example. I don't know if he does it anymore but he and that group of mountaineering friends of his used to meet up once a year and try to keep him all yours. Now those are memories to cherish. Now those are friendships that are like really going to be cemented once you have to make a physical effort to go somewhere.

I was like I'm watching Sopranos right now and for anyone who hasn't watched it what like what a lucky person you are. I mean five seasons down and I can see why people call it the greatest television series of all time but anyway that's another episode. And it's something very small that touched me and this was written in era where the internet wasn't as pervasive as it is right now. The daughter of me and the mom, Kamala they were going through sort of like a rough patch but even in that rough patch meadow reached out and said hey it's either my birthday or your birthday and on our birthday you've always done this thing so can we go over there.

I'm like oh man that's such a beautiful thing because she came all the way from New York to New Jersey to do this and it's felt like more personal than say a phone call would have been something so you know just a small. New York to New Jersey is basically like Bombay to Kanye so it's not very. It's very fun. I was wondering this direction.

But yeah point, point, point mate. I just wanted to make one more observation here. There seems to be a strong neurological sort of basis for friendships so they studied researchers studied friendships a lot apparently at different points and they found that toddlers as young as one year old or something like that end up making friends they exhibit a preference for certain individuals over so that friendships and the nature of the friendship changes and they theorize that one of the reasons this changes is something called a theory of mind. So theory of mind is when a toddler approximately 18 months or two years something that's when the toddler realizes that other people have a mind of their own otherwise the toddlers think that everyone knows whatever they know everyone sees whatever they see everyone experience there's no difference.

For the toddler it's just the toddlers world. There's no other world and when you develop a theory of mind you realize that other people have different views of things then sort of neuro biologists or whatever they call thought that this process was completed when the individual turned five because that's when practically the brain you know all the sign all the myelinization all that stuff happens but they now feel or they now have evidence to show that it keeps changing over time that is why it really changes around teenagers. So at teenagers so there is a center in the brain called the ventral spryate or something which rewards the rewards you with if you do something good it generates coherent electrical impulses which is the reward system for the brain and that happens with friendship and so neurologist think that this is the social brain because it requires coordination which is possibly why I think as we get older all of us I think have made really good friendships in the you know over the last maybe a decade over the Internet people whom we really didn't go up with that nothing in common with just some light interest and you know some share taste and then the Internet enabled us to discover each other and hang with each other and then you know you develop it's not I mean four of us became friends but we used to hang around with maybe 40 people not all 40 people are just that level of friends that we are now and why would that be except that there is something in the mind which is something that we are now in the world. In the mind which is rewarding us from us so if I'm spending time with the three of you there is a reward there is a satisfaction there is some happiness happening something very indefinable very difficult to sort of put your finger on but you know so my point is that there is a neurological reward system as well that level that point.

That's interesting so I was wondering when the Internet would be brought up over here and the effect that that's had on friendship as a poll like we probably have more quote unquote friends but closer to fewer and fewer people than say the previous generation I don't know whether that's a I'm sure this has been studied a lot but it's kind of interesting that this is article I read in the Atlantic just a couple of days back and this was of course thanks to Mr. Rocket boys activities over at Twitter and they said this is probably going to signal the death of the social media either that I'm not going to talk about the article itself again that's possibly another simplified topic for another day but it's kind of interesting like what if the world now goes back to not having these shallow friendships and it's more about the fewer connections again like the way it was meant to be interesting enough over the last few years have been seeing a lot of articles like were human brains ever wired for the Internet or did we not even did we deserve or whether the Internet is a good or a bad tool but the fact of the matter then we go back to Harari's theories and all that. I'm right which is there are only so many number of people who you can be friends with and human communication was never meant to be globally broadcast and all that so it's kind of interesting what if we actually do revert to an era where there are going to be fewer friendship where the whole thing about collecting friends and all that which was a scene I'd say in the late orties when you were saying that I kind of thought like oh it's almost like what Tony said it's like this Internet has made us one big classroom again and from there we've chosen a few friends and we become close to them and kind of seem like that to me because it's unlikely that I would have met the at least two of you actually all of you if it weren't for the Internet in some way and sticking on the. Actually I have a great way to end the show although we will.

But staying on the Harari line as such about I mean at the end of the day it's interesting how I mean there was this is all about like creating your drive right I mean you're choosing your tribe in some ways but it's interesting how like the parameters for try choosing have kind of evolved and as. That is true that's very interesting and also how it's brought about like the center how the Internet has kind of changed that aspect and also the parameters which with you select like the example that I gave about how I chose my movement right like it's about I mean because of the lack of information that I have from so many points like earlier I mean I mean I mean I'm in pretty historic times was this dude have good muscle definition can you swing a club. Well and that's why he's my friend or he's in my drive to see this guy supporting my club he's this guy supporting me. I have to get me into a club get a club will this guy get a club to be or now this weekend play Spoker does this guy have clubs.

What I think is an interesting corollary here is like you can look at it very logically and say this is why I have a very logical reason to be friends with this person right and but we see the course of a lot of our friendship while we engineer our environments and try to surround ourselves with like minded people friendships are still like because again it's it doesn't like there are people who might introduce to each other and say oh you guys will totally hit it off. Like I remember this had happened where a friend had actually introduced me to another mutual friend and said hey y'all interested in US politics this person is also interested in US politics and you guys will like you have a lot to talk about and stuff like that and kind of put me in touch with them and I had a few conversations about it and then I just met dead ends everywhere because I realized that there was no flow whatsoever that was just not going with anything right so you can logically pair people but apparently there are so many intangibles and the way we work is so I mean it's so something that we cannot process logically and it's something so intangible in some ways that we get to that like for example I mean if you get it as the most enduring and the first friendship of in the world which is the friendship between man and dog right which is a domestication of a wolf at some point of time which happened by man where a wolf was just falling around man logically speaking it would have been much easier for us to become like domesticate maybe great apes right because they are similar to us and we have a lot of compatible behavior plus their intelligence is among the highest in the animal world and all that stuff but the reason we kind of gravitated towards the wolf and there's some evolutionary logic behind that is because they have skill sets that humans do not possess and so it's a symbiotic relationships where we relationship where we give each other point points which the other doesn't have a dog has a heightened sense of hearing smell his ability to chase away other predators and humans had the ability to harness fire as well as feed the animal so the two unlikely companions I mean human could have been food for the early wolf but that's where they chose the symbiotic relationship and therefore evolved into the dog at some point of time because of those intangible factors of realizing that you know what this person can actually give me a new facet of life which I never experienced before and I hope humans are in calculating as unique they want to be all great points and all of that but like just looking at some of the terms of friends like atymology of you know like where a friend comes from I mean that's the hardest to get I had to look it up wow okay no idea I'm not a friend actually comes to root word is love comrade comrade oh you want to to guess comrade comes from camera camera camera camera camera is the room like chamber right like in camera so comrade is basically someone who's shared a room with companion I think this is the reason who is good company company companion pan in French oh great oh someone you share right here yeah someone you've broken right yeah basically I think the thing about like deep friendships is that you had shared experience at one point and then like you reminisce it at a later point so we were growing up it was much easier to go out and play in the playground because you're in school or just outside and stuff like that and those faces have shrunk so much of like so much so that now basically all you can literally go into as a big group is probably have a few drinks which also was innovations and actually I'm in this memory engineering college I studied engineering so all my engineering college friendships are basically based on how we all got drunk and fell into ex-litch together remarkable how firm that friendship is right it was like 35 years since I passed my engine this is always to happen I think because you and I once spoke about this whenever we eat somebody who's part of the old Twitter gang we always spend about 30 minutes just talking about some of the antics of the like at one point at time he was like I don't want to do the second like the same two weeks we reference the same people the same quirks yeah yeah you get tired of that at some point of time I guess now I think one thing that I wanted to sort of acknowledge is probably like our friendships as children were probably very different from what Indian women had access to at that point like just the sheer ability to go out and play after school so it's not true that was afforded to just this physical safety or whatever or even like like one of my best friends from school is who I used to go to engineering and then coaching and we would go after school like at 6.7 a.m. and get back at 10 people obviously there were no women in that class because it was not safe for you to do so there's also a lot of male privilege at least in India of being able to create these memories of still I don't have anywhere to go with this like oh yeah you did women didn't okay interesting okay interesting jumps so now when you pitch the idea of because to all listeners we have to pitch and bet each other's ideas before it's a there's a there's a stringent yeah friendship friendship doesn't cut it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so when you said you wanted to do an episode on friendship is this have we covered what you thought no actually one thing we haven't covered I deeply wanted to say was there is a gold ship there's a silver ship but a base ship it oh my god I'm not sure I'm very important you want to do this just to say that though the good better lost his axe in the river and then you don't know the goddess of the forest appeared and asked him is this golden axe here yeah it's a very sad people she gives a golden axe back to him saying is this yours and he says no then she gives a silver axe and she gives the but an accent he says yes then she blesses it I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know story about honesty is the best what is he what happened as a result of this like he got all three he got all yes honest he gave you all yes okay oh my god access and allies okay this clearly recent on since I got the x-axis and the y-axis if you are the region I got three axes you would have invented quadrant you know we have reached the logical end point of this so what I wanted to so I think Marin wanted to say something else no I was just saying that the reason I you know I decided to talk about friendship is I've been you know much this has been repeated ad nauseam but I am actually indeed writing a book and I was reminiscing about my friends and I was just marveling at how serendipitous first of all it says you just find friend in the most unlikely of places when you find that friend you almost never know or never realize that that friend is really going to be a good friend yeah and vice versa people you think are going to be really good friend turn out not to be like she gets said you know you you have a lot of things in common but it just doesn't work out it doesn't work out it's not interesting and that's mutual so even that person at this moment on his podcast was we saying whatever the other thing is how low maintenance of friendship so you could not sort of you know invest anything to a friendship for decades and oftentimes the friendship will just you know come back when it was at the time you are better it's not yeah but I think sorry if I can ask you a question like yes not yet it are 40 so I think we can still see we are exploring already I mean sort of things one is that once what's I came into being you inevitably form groups with your school friends engineering friends I said and I think like there are two sets of people right one is people you who you were friends with back in the time and have had sort of like a similar R as you in terms of like probably thoughts or wavelength etc etc another who basically remain pretty much the same person and I like very clearly know who I'll hit it off with if I meet them now and it's probably not you know the sort of best friend from back then so is that something that you've noticed like yeah so obviously back in the day your spears were very small you really had not much experience not much knowledge you really very very but there was something in the way people you know how you carried conversation how you process new ideas how you interacted with new people which told you whether that person is going to be a friend or not unpackaging now I had a very strong bias to do for people who are kind not mean to people for instance I was just telling we went out somewhere my son and I with someone and that person was very mean to waiters went to a restaurant and admitted to the food was not you know it was presented not probably there's shabby some some problem with it but this person was very nasty to the waiter and we didn't like it both of us and I pretty much I'm never gonna mean that person like I don't want to spend more time you form your opinions on very slender you know sort of very small and incitement things that he's probably a terrific person in every other way but I saw him being into a waiter so I'm not you know it's interesting right it's like I don't think it's insignificant at all it's almost like there are certain unsaid values in your own head it could be good or bad I mean according to your system and the friends that you make could really cut across anywhere like as you were saying that I was trying to string together all the good friends that I've had in my life from kindergarten right up to now all of which if you place them in room look very different from each other like huh there are some common strains between these they're kind or you know true they have a certain way of looking at the world like that's interesting so that connects say somebody who is quote-unquote a recent friend like Bertie all the way to say a friend who might one of my best friends in school and there were certain things that I can almost see together analysis shall be done into this interesting nothing so I wanted to so what I wanted to actually kind of end this is actually nothing you said it almost perfectly and I want to take it from there is you said when you meet somebody you never know when if they're going to end up being like a good friend or not I think we can say that the four of us have ended up being pretty decent friends so why don't we end this episode by saying how we actually met each other for the first time I know how I met Chuck for sure we met at Anna Malaysia I still have a yeah we should cancer I didn't watch my hands yeah yeah the first thing Chuck was doing that I mean it's a thing he was when you're playing the guitar if I remember yeah I was yeah I remember you came and making up silly songs yeah you're making up silly yeah what I remember and it was even what it splits I mean I distinctly remember it was silly we have one I don't remember but I remember you I remember one thing that you brought in Ferrero Rocher for through for uninsquid this I remember very very really naryne I met you like that we obviously Tony yeah Tony I met over Twitter I remember we had used to have this terrific word play things on Twitter was different yeah let's no no no no no no no no no no no no no no let's not do that we'll do a separate episode for that I'm free by the time musk shut down so yeah so yeah so this is interesting right because so I met Tony famously as a good or good bear this is like for people who don't know the story or could use to be the soul the social networking site back in the day and there were communities over there and one such community was a Malia Lam poor jokes community like yes there was that a Charlie community it was thriving I remember when I made my first joke over there and one of the senior admins who I used to look up to said yes you will also have a podcast of your own something like this and I met Tony over there I obviously me so again like you vibe with certain people over there this person seems to know English better than the others in making slightly more intelligent jokes he is in a community called Nick wits where the nid is like oh bad mind blown so obviously became friends over there and then I met him for the first time even though Tony and I have zero musical interest overlap and Tony I think has zero musical interest apart from doing a part of song to me as joke references on simplified we actually met for the first time at hard rock cafe in Boney I even there outside I don't think he came inside and he meant to have it's we actually met 11 I think that only hard rock cafe that only that was the first time you know what it's like wasn't it near Kalanadar there was Maharaj I believe was the restaurant no we met at never mind this we had to be later what are these and I mean I mean we can do like I was so happy to do that I get the same so please but sorry but one thing I want to say one thing that seemed to be interesting was like it's interesting how you'd assume that all of us are from the same Twitter circle or something but it's interesting that Narain became friends with Tony separate from how I became friends with Tony I like I kind of find these overlaps kind of nice yeah yeah for me although I was for me I mean I started off by I found out about Chuck like I was a follower of Chuck so to speak like I initially used to follow him on Paddle Guy one of the first five great platforms I was going networking yeah so but I mean I was I was looking to try and get into the B school Chuck went to at one point of time I ended up going to the different one but still like we just got in touch and we texted the main reason I got in touch was because I wanted an internship at his organization and so he put me in touch through that so through Paddle Guy he talked about which organization he was on and he was in and that's how we got in touch and we first met though as to have it I mean as was the 10 in our friendship later was that we met at the I think the very first weekender and no the second weekender I think we met at the second weekender and yeah that was Chuck was severely incapacitated but very excited and later that night shattered his hip again so yeah then after I think the next time I met you was when I came to Fortis hospital to see you yeah it was it was a pretty interesting setup but yeah I mean when it comes to Tony I think Tony was one of the many neat ups I think we met at Mon's case right must have no no we yes okay my memory is like fully gone now because I you and Chuck together like doesn't live in pretty sure I need to be here something right I mean you were roommates with Chuck at that point yeah I was roommates like I think I met all of you guys because I was roommates with Chuck so I can't other guys I can't say that there is some great origin story but Chuck is the origins 24 p.m. No have you covered all combinations?

I mean I'm just gonna repeat and say I bet Chuck and I think you guys were in Mumbai and there was a very thriving sort of Twitter community when Anand was also there and yeah and I was in working in Bangalore and then went to IMK first time I came to Mumbai so pretty short like that also although Tony and I have a separate parallel connection is my first cousin went to school with it we had to be school with it so my first cousin knows him and all that they went to IMK together so same batch or she was your junior or something she was nothing when you see me to be one year she was also had the same surname yeah yeah she's also that happily so yeah so she's my first cousin from my dad said yeah so but yeah that was there at the other plastic memory if the first original baby I have of Tony was he was in Bombay but very unhappy to be in Bombay he really didn't like the city that was fun guys yeah so this has been awesome so I just want to say that stay safe and stay simplified