My Friends

As everyone else is celebrating Friendship Day around, I thought I would celebrate it by writing about my "Friends."

I am the eldest in my family and me ad my brother grew up at separate places except for few years, which meat we never strongly bonded in childhood, today we rather share a friendship than brotherhood. This meant that throughout my childhood, I was making friends anywhere and everywhere. I would not try and describe each of my friends but just try and list them in a chronological order; may be I will attempt to write about few in later posts.

Before I start listing down, I, with my whole heart, thank GOD for giving me such wonderful friends, who stood by me in difficult times despite my shortcomings and foolishness, who stand by me, if not physically but with a shadow of their soul hanging around me. As an extrovert, it was never difficult for me to make friends; one can always see me in the open hands posture for a new friend. Some of you might say that friendship develops over a long period of time but for me it is instantaneous and few of you may say that it must be mutual but for me it need not be. I don't know where I read this but I vaguely remember that it is from Gita that God is present in every living being including oneself and from that moment I tried experiencing it and despite being a judgmental person in nature, I started regarding everyone as a friend even if I had a reason to hate/fight them.

Let me get started with the list now:
1. Earliest of my friends is Mahendra from Govindaraopet, Warangal. He studied along with me till class 3 at Kakatiya Public School
2. Suraj was the next friend I can remember. I met him at United High School, Adarshnagar, Hyderabad
3. Next I remember Raghu who provoked me to study hard and come first in class in class 4 again
4. Then come my friends who are still closely in touch with me - Allam Praveen Kumar, M Srikanth, Chandrasekhar (chandu) and M Srinivas from Unique Public School, Suryanagar, Hyderabad. Two female friends Kavita Bandari and Praveena Reddy, I will never forget in my life
5. One of my closest friend with whom I share an intimate relationship - Amuda Vijaya Partha Saradhi, my diploma classmate
6. Ravi Kumar Popuri, a very generous friend and Ravi Sankar, my intellectual friend again from my diploma days, Sampath - a confused friend
7. Another friend, to visit whom, I specifically traveled to remote locations, Siram Srinivas, is special one. He stood by me in one of the darkest hours of my life. I can never forget the question I asked him and the reply he gave. He stood for what he believed and from that answer I built a new life
8. Ramakrishna Pavuluri - a colleague but more of an uncle and friend, MAS Charyulu-again a uncle friend colleague from Bakelite Hylam days
9. My boss friend - Rajendra Kumar Kandikonda
10. My guru friend - Nanduri Jagannadham
11. My enlightened friend - Sadanandam, all the above from Bakelite Hylam again
12. Trimurthy Ragi, a friend from whom I learnt how to live life
13. Sivakumaran - a dear colleague
14. Rummy Sharma, Rohan Kashyap, Ritu Raj, Poulomi Ghosh, Shibabrato Ghosh, Sawan, Satya Prakash, Chidanandam, Bhaskar, Srinivas Reddy, Prashanthi, Suryanarayana DSN, Sireesh KK, Ram Goutham from Middle Earth Consultants, Hyderabad
15. Venkata Raman Govada, a special friend again from Bakelite Hylam days
16. From ISB, if I have to list there are many but those who come my mind are - Rao Korupolu, Suhail Abrol, Anandram Narasimhan, Gauravjeet Singh, Sudhanshu Bankata, Viswa Kirti, Nidhi Reddy, Sonali Sighal, Ratnakar Gore, Arun Kumar Singh, Alka, Amit Goel, Ankur Agarwal, Ashish Naredi, Dhiraj Kumar, Dinaz Vervetwala, Karthik Polasani, Krishna Chaitanya, Narayanan Krishnan, Nisha, Deepthi and Sumit Gared, Parag Rastogi, Pradeep, Pradyot, Swati, Pavana, Shikha&Amit, Shallabh Pal, Varun Khullar and many more
17. Deeptha and her husband (who helped with my AIMA project)
17. Aman Tripathi (where are you)
18. Peter Ballem, Rajeev Kumar, Rajender, Pandyan, Rimjhim, Shirisha Boda, Sarat Sahu, Sujata Joseph
19. P G Venkateswaran and family - my dearest friend
20. Sravan Dasoju - a friend who showered me with his goodwill
21. Sunil Godavarthy (AIMA friend)
22. Anil Rawal, Anil Chilukuri and Abhishek Ranjan from ADAG
23. 100g - a special friend

If I have missed someone, I apologize but if I recall a name, will append this list. I once again thank each and everyone and many more for making my life a worthy one.