Placebo

The hours would pass into days, and soon it was time to head home. My father would arrive to pick me, just as I ate the last morsels of the delectable dinner her beautiful Brazilian mother had served. We thrived in this weekly routine, Maya and I, in Douala, Cameroon. Tuesdays were my house, Thursdays were hers. Home from school, lunch, then homework together, followed by some games and then sacking out with music – mostly Andrea Bocelli and Cat Stevens, though we ended up listening to Besame Mucho and Guantanamera in loop! She would bring her vinyl collection and I would record them on cassettes. Mondays and Wednesdays would pass quickly because we had the next day to look forward to – a day of companionship, fun, bonding and being with each other. Our parents knew we were inseparable, and the dining table always had an extra setting placed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My life in Doula was my life with Maya. It was beautiful, it was happy. We even had a secret sign we created to mark our friendship.

She walked all the way across Marine Drive towards Girgaum to drop me off and then I walked her almost all the way back again, my Mother reminisced amusingly. We couldn’t stop chatting, hanging out with each other, and treasuring the moments together. This was my Mother and her best friend Manda, making the most of the 70’s. On a salary of Rs. 500, working in the telephone exchange, she would tell me, we bought roasted peanuts and celebrated with ice-cream. I had enough money saved by the month end, to then buy a saree for Manda as a surprise, and she would buy one for me, she laughed. Movies were a weekly treat, and Manda and I would bunk office a few hours early to catch the early evening show at Maratha Mandir or Eros. Why would you buy sarees for each other, I asked her, more so if it hardly continued to remain a surprise? It is the thrill of getting something from your best friend, she would tell me, the excitement of wanting to know if she could read your mind, think for you, and choose the same thing as you. Everybody has that one special friend, she continued, who is sometimes your identity and other times your shadow.

Over the years, as a leader in a growing Indian bank, my biggest takeaway was my learning from the interactions between the members of my team. Growing from 20 to 200 over a couple of years would mean additional interpersonal dynamics, conflicts and politics, I had thought. What I had underestimated was the strength emerging from friendships and the camaraderie blooming, a force which kept the ship afloat during tough times, a power which gave courage during private lows, and an energy which brought out the best in each other. A large debenture which we launched included paperwork to be completed overnight and an administrative overload. It drew the best out of my pack as they filled in for each other, urged each other to take breaks, volunteered to take the load off their friends, happily reworked on each other’s errors and even shoved sandwiches playfully in mouths as they coaxed their friends to eat. The memories of those difficult and stressful times remained in anecdotes of comically falling off chairs, turning up with mismatched socks and the hilarious breaking of spectacles. I was touched with the stories which emerged from their friendships, reminding me of the Medal of Friendship.

The 1936 Olympics in Berlin went down in history on account of several firsts. Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe were friends who both made it to the finals of the pole vault, thus assured a medal each but to general astonishment, they refused to compete further, desirous of sharing the honours. Their request was rejected, and after lengthy discussions, it was agreed that Nishida, would be given the silver, because he had vaulted 4.25 at his first attempt, compared to Oe, who had needed two attempts at that height. Dissatisfied, on their return to Japan, they had both medals cut in half and then fused into two medals, each half-silver and half-bronze eulogizing the medals as “The Medals of Friendship”.

Years ago when Margaret Mead, the anthropologist was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture, the student expected Mead to talk about clay pots, tools for hunting, grinding-stones, or religious artifacts. Instead, Mead said that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000 year old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. This bone had been broken and had healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, you cannot drink or hunt for food. No creature survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the fallen, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life.

Many years later, this learning became the backbone of my research and now, one of the mainstays of the culture building and transformation journeys we partner on globally. Based on 613 responses we studied from the largest Indian private sector bank, Camaraderie or a sense of interconnectedness was one of the top three prime drivers of great workplace cultures, environments which enhanced the feeling of wellbeing and spirituality within employees. Job satisfaction was higher with those employees who felt like they belonged to a group and had strong relationships at work, there-after displaying greater loyalty and productivity. One of the longest longitudinal studies done at Harvard since 1930 and still running is based on the simple question “What does it take to thrive?” The researchers thought it would be IQ, qualifications, business success, or social standing, but the number one factor that determined happiness and professional success (these people earned $80,000 p.a more on an average) was strong relationships.

The toughest fall out of the current Covid-19 quarantine has been the strain on the spontaneous and frequent interactions, mainly in person, with loved ones and old friends. The lockdown has changed the rules of the game. What would have been a quick hop-over for a spontaneous cup of coffee, meeting with colleagues at office, a chance get together at a local eatery, warm hugs and eager cheers at celebrations, on the spur homecooked meals for dear friends, have moved into interactions separated by screens, conversations sans touch, joys with virtual sharing, and the knowledge that someday sometime soon, we will be together again. Intriguingly, the good news is newer relationships are emerging - bonds of a different kind – through the joys of recognizing and noticing all those whom we did not see before, those whom we did not engage with before, those whom we did not acknowledge before, those who did not matter before. I now know what’s cooked for lunch in the home of Raju and Savita, husband and wife who live in the quarters allocated for the security. I speak with Rajinder, the honest fish vendor who tells me how his 5-year-old son is demanding ice cream and biscuits. I look forward to seeing the police van with Meenakshi, the young constable during her rounds of the area, delighted to offer her a thermos of tea to ease her fatigue. I wave to the neighbors across the building who sing songs on their terrace every evening, voices which used to be a disturbance for me in the past.

Manda and my Mother, Maya and I, we had something which made everything that came our way acceptable and happy. For Veeru there was a Jai whose iconic friendship made them believe that a 2 man army is enough for an army of dacoits. Today, when we seem to be far from a vaccine, I cannot help but wonder if we are already on the journey to building the immunity, we need to make it through these trying times together? My mother’s immunity was Manda . Mine was Maya.

The doorbell rings and I find a box left outside my door with Bhakri and Pithala, neatly packed in it. Rushing to peek out the window, I see Savita make her way back to her quarters. With just those 10 steps, I realized, she had given me the biggest booster dose of immunity I could have ever imagined.

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.