Groupism

Politics is the field you normally associate groupism with. Internal groups, groups formed with other parties, alliances, etc etc. All groups are characterized by a strong patriotic feeling for the group. All groups are identified by a strong feeling of dislike for other groups. But not all instances of groupism are like this.

I have been the architect of many a group among my friends since my school days. If it was the LAKE SUPERIOR club till tenth (the reason for the name is a story in itself), four of us (Deepak Jose, Josey Mathew, Sooraj Balakrishnan, Myself) decided at the threshold of our adulthood to take on Microsoft with a company of our own, MastermindS.

I don’t know why I make all these groups. Maybe I need a name to have the feeling of belonging to something. Maybe I'm an evil genius, who is out to ruin the pious nature of friendship, with masked techniques of destruction. But like always, I can’t decide which group I belong to. And like always, I'll leave it to my friends to decide.

Anyways, college provided me with a new platform of eventful surroundings and friendly strangers to start new groups. Hence, the 'Super Six'.
Having shared the second and the third benches in our first year class for the first four months, in all permutations and combinations that is possible amongst us, and because we all had similar interests and familiar choices in life, I decided to give a name to our unofficial group. Hence, the 'Super Six' was born, comprising of Deepak.R (dpk), Krishnadev (kichu), Shivan (shiv), Siddharth (sid), Sivaharsh (siva) and myself. Though only shiv was interested in the concept then, I'm happy to see that everyone has got the feeling of belonging to this group at the end of our four years together.

My second group was one, which had an aim. To make robots. A big dream like this required us to put in big amounts of money. To reduce the amount per head, we increased the number of members, from the usual four to fourteen. Chaithin (cak), dpk, deepu (omana), Dileep (dlp), jaison, Rohan, shiv, sid, siva, Indu, Mrieene (Masci), Lakshmi, Sruthi and myself became the flag bearers of 'Nymphadora'. We struck gold the 1st time we contested, though that was almost all that we ever won. :D

A two month preparation, which was capped off by five days of non-stop work at a hostel room at NIT, Calicut made me decide I had enough of robotics. Not because I hated to work, or hated the work. It was because our sweet little robot decided at the competition venue, that spinning in circles at the starting point would be more fun than doing what it had been doing for the past few times. Trying to solve the maze.

I also had a withering love life to look into. The then gal-of-my-dreams wasn’t taking any keen interest in me. This prompted me to utilize more time for wooing her. After the failure of all my incredible ideas and incessant proposals, a dejected me found solace between the lines of 'Palavattam'. Equating me in real life to the character played by Salim Kumar in the song was the idea of kichu. Using that as an inspiration to make a video was the idea of 'The Latest Pirates'. Originally founded by cak, dpk, dlp, shiv, sid & myself, Arun.A (ponni) was brought abroad for our future ventures.

'Pinneyum Palavattam', 'In engg clg', 'runaway 2 fame', and 'Sagar Aliyan's Suppli' are the videos that we have released till now. An unnamed project is yet to be released. As in the case of the first video, each of our videos depicted an aspect of the typical college-goer. The theme of the video, the style in which it was taken, and the support of friends made this group of mine the most famous, the most successful one of mine yet.

Even though everyone would agree to my above statement, I would gladly disagree at any given moment. The most endearing of all my groups came in the last year. I like to call it 'One6'. You might be tempted to say that it’s just another number, but it’s an important number for me, because it represents the number of people I've come to cherish the company of. Anoop (pajji), cak, dpk, Deepu (abraham), dlp, Jayashankar (jaishu), Jaison, Kichu, Sreeram (kurup), ponni, Rohan, Sanal (saku), shiv, sid, siva and myself make this sixteen. No one among us were like the other, we had lots of internal bickerings going on, but none of that prevented us from having the best of times together. Words fail me in describing the memories. The sad thing about the group is that we have been scattered along the length of India, from Trivandrum to Delhi. But we have made a promise to each other; that we will never forget the memories we had together, or the people who helped in creating the memories.

There's one another group I’m a part of. Having just three members, it’s the smallest possible group ever. And it wasn’t christened by me. My friends tagged us, Indu, masci and me, by the name of 'Love Triangle'. Don’t misunderstand the term 'love' in the name. It’s there, just for the sake of giving some sense to the name. But the three of us share a deep bond of friendship, which I hope we will continue over the years.

After hearing all this, you will be able to understand my reason, if at my death bed, I write 'GROUP', when asked which word will sum up my entire life.