Known Strangers

Until my VII standard, my mother was my educational guru. Around IX standard, I got adopted (with respect to my education) by my new Guru named Doddwad. He is turning point in my life. There is so much to tell about my guru & I will definitely dedicate another blog just for him. But now, I’ll just re-iterate his rule no. 1 which was “Never make any friends during this age of time (teen age). They spoil your time and will side track you wrt studies. Ignore them & concentrate/ focus on studies”

He disappeared during my PUC first year but I, as an ideal student, continued with his rules till I entered engineering. I have friends from school and from engineering but shockingly no friends during PU! Even in engineering I was bit very strict & resistant in getting close to anyone (mind was programmed like that and it was hard to get out of rules which was followed for almost 4 years)

There is a saying in Kannada, “hutt guna, sathru hogodilla” means, the character of a person when he born, will remain forever! So usually, when you get some close friends by understanding there so called, born character (which never changes), you are almost like BFF. It’s hard to know the person’s born character but once you know them over a time, they are no more strangers to you. You will know them very well and they’ll know you very well.

But soon after, we undergo several social status updates, personal updates, location updates, getting into conflicts etc with various reasons we stop talking with them or we fight and destroy relation or something or the other will make us stop being friends or stop talking with each other. Once this happens, they are like “strangers” to us. To be more specific, what I call them as “Known Strangers”!

As I said, the born character remains forever, no matter where they go, what they do, how they are & since you know these people very well, it’s easy to understand them without even being friends with them anymore. It is like, you know them very well, but you won’t talk with each other, exactly behaving like strangers.

These are special kind of people in my life, whom I know well but don’t talk. I name them as “Known strangers”. As I said, I never had very close friends during PUC or Engineering but after that, during my professional life & before that, in my school life, I had few close friends with whom I never talk now but I know them very well. These are my known strangers! I still haven’t figured out, how to deal with them.

I am sure, not only me, we all will have some of these known strangers in our life. Just sit back and think, their names will pop up in your head. Probably, you might get more names than me, coz luckily I didn’t had any friends during my PUC education ;) 

When having a group discussion with others, few known strangers names pop up in conversation & it’s difficult on how to react or when we see them crossing road or across street, it’s difficult, what to do? Wave a HI or give a smile or just ignore? As I said, it is very difficult to deal with them but don’t worry, according to me, these are special people in our life and I suggest that we should cherish them. What do you say?:)