Speech 4: Friendship @ Mumbai Toastmasters

Friendship. Friendship Toastmasters. So how many of you all have a group of friends who you know for more than 20 years, more than 2 decades? Wow, quite a few. I'm asking because that's how old I am. But I'm also mentioning it because I too have a group of friends. It's the 6 of us and we call ourselves the Gorislands. For no good reason. And I've known 5 of them. I've known 4 of them for around 10 years, and I've known one of them for 22 years. Yeah, we've known each other since we were born. In fact, we were— we have— we've been neighbors for the last 22 years. Our parents have been friends since they were 18, so we had a national camaraderie since the day we were born. And— but he's only been my neighbor for 22 years. See, 2 days ago, him and one more friend from the United States, the 2 of them, they left India to go to America to pursue their master's, to pursue higher education. Now, I know them for a very long time, and what they really are, are masters of disappearing when the billboards show up, or disappearing when the— never being on time. That's what they were the masters of. Not Masters of Finance or Industrial Engineering. But they did go. And 2 days ago, I was at the airport. I think they planned this attack on us because they together scheduled our flights at 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the morning. We had to go to the airport twice in less than 4 hours and spend more than 5 hours at the airport. It was brutal, really. I mean, no, no, not because we had to spend a lot of time at the airport. Because the parking ticket is so expensive. We could barely afford dinner that night. But even though— but what else would you expect from a couple of best friends, really? Would you really expect them to do it in a straightforward manner? No. And this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from a bunch of pranksters who love playing pranks at each other all the time. I remember when I was a kid, we were back to our sleepover at one of our friend's house, and we decided to play the game of Dark Room. Now, Dark Room is a very simple game. Everyone hides inside their room and the diner, he comes inside the dark room and touches everyone and guesses who they are. Very simple game. So that day I was the diner and I was standing outside the room waiting for my friends to call me. Then suddenly my friend's mother, she walked outside of her room. So she asked me, what are you doing here at 2 o'clock alone? Where is everyone? So I explained the game to her. And as I was explaining it to her, I suddenly got an idea. I asked Rishi to accompany me. She said yes. She opened the door, she walked ahead, and she placed herself next to my friend who was hiding in a bunk bed. He was hiding on top of a bunk bed under a blanket. She pinched him. He didn't react. She pinched him again. He didn't react. She pinched him the third time, and this time he was shouting, "Booth, booth, booth, booth, booth!" We were having a ball. I switched on the lights, and trust me, I've never seen anyone so scared of their own mother. And I'm glad that it didn't say anything wrong because we were a bunch of 14-year-olds learning the wrong words at school. So I'm really glad it didn't say anything wrong. But this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from pranksters. Now this nature of us playing pranks at each other, it didn't go away with the parents and neither did it go away at the airport. So at the airport where all the families were crying, "Oh, he's going away," the 6 of us, we stood and we had the biggest smile in the world and we were waving with both hands, "Go, leave India." But this is exactly the kind of thing that you would do with a best friend, right? I mean, where else can you do this kind of stuff and get away with it? But in all seriousness, the— you only realize the value of something so profound, something like a friendship which lasts for such a long time, when you're at the verge of losing it. Unfortunately, when you're at the verge of losing it, or when you've lost it. I remember when my first friend was about to walk in. He was second in line to enter the airport, and we were all waving outside, like I said, waving with both our hands. And suddenly we realized that, oh, he is going. This is it. The guy we've been meeting every single day for the last 10 years, we're not going to see him for another few years or more. It was tragic, and suddenly it hit us all. Together. We decided to run across the street. The cars were honking, we didn't care. We pushed the other passengers, we didn't care. We went there and we hugged him for one last time. And suddenly we all realized just how valuable our friendship is and just how much the bond means to every single one of us. Whether you have the fights, whether you don't talk to each other, whether you make a lot of fun of each other, whether you have doubts, in that moment it all ended. You realize that this bond was bound to last a lifetime. I remember when my second friend was about— was going inside the airport, from the time he entered the line to enter the airport to the time he was inside the airport where we could see him, he looked back and waved at least 15 times. And as soon as he went inside where we couldn't see him, his parents, who are like mine because I've known them for a very long time, started crying in a way and started sobbing in a way I've never seen It was very different and touching for me. I remember one of them, they took me to the side and told me, you have to come home now. You used to come to meet him, now you have to come to meet us because, well, you remind us of him. And that moved me. I had tears, I had goosebumps, and I didn't know how to react. It only made me— it only filled me with a lot of gratitude and made me value our bond even more, that no matter how far they may be, this long-distance friendship will