This week, Siddhartha Mallya, son of businessman Vijay Mallya took to his social media page with an honest assessment of what life was around him, before the crisis.
“Amazing the amount of people who over the years asked us for IPL tickets, for F1 Paddock Passes, for KFA upgrades, for New Years eve invites, for Kingfisher Calendars etc, seem to have magically lost their voices over the last couple of months. Yes, times may be tough at present, but one thing this whole situation has done is expose those who are TRUE friends, and those who were just in it for the free ride,” he wrote.
Sid Mallya’s epiphany describes what we could call “lightening the load” — a filtering of those around you just before, or after a life-changing event. That event prompts your circle to evaluate their degree of friendship with you and some, those you assumed were your closest, simply take-off. Jennifer Wilson, author of New World Rising put it bluntly. “A messy house is a must — it separates your true friends from other friends. Real friends are there to visit you, not your house.”
Former Team India captain Md Azharuddin, a survivor of some truly terrible times took all the match-fixing allegations against him in his stride, changed careers, became a Member of Parliament, cleared his name and now had a movie to his name. He offers a few tips and one of the first things you have to deal with on a personal level, is nasty gossip.
“You can’t expect everyone to say nice things. And don’t think too much about what people are saying either because you have to just fight your own battles. Go forward in life, look ahead. Instead of feeling cheated with the fact that people didn’t come forward to help, just feel happy that you were in a position to help them in the past. It’s best not to have expectations from others.”
Azhar adds, “Life is full of ups and downs and you need to take a positive approach. Just be patient as it takes time to resolve problems.” The former cricketer survived the storm and now when he looks back, he thinks about the people who were there for him — like Kapil Dev and former BCCI President Raj Singh Dungarpur.
Also, since nobody’s life is perfect, if there ever was an option to choose your bad times, make sure to do it when you are young, as it is that much easier to cope.
Sandhya Raju
Satyam Computers’ founder B. Ramalinga Raju’s daughter-in-law Sandhya says being young and even new to Hyderabad, helped her cope with the crisis her family had gone through. “When I moved to Hyderabad I had no friends or relatives here. In fact I only started going out and meeting people after things got tough. Those who befriended me and were nice to me didn’t view me as a contact worth knowing or someone’s daughter-in-law — they liked me, for me. So I ended up making good friends.” She too was able to filter out life’s unnecessaries.
“I realised who was necessary and who was not (fake). It also made me focus more on my career and goals in life. In some ways that period really helped,” she says.
