As Long as We have Friends!

What is friendship - perhaps I start in a very simplistic manner. After all do we define friendship? No we don't, we take the word for granted, underlying some assumptions, to get to know, to keep in touch, to write to etc etc. But is that all, to it? Any deeper implications?

A lot of Indian society is still conservative, so much so that friendship cannot be construed between the opposite sex - it is either love or marriage!

What rubbish!

For example I always think of my childhood, school friends who I cannot meet, but whose memories I carry in my conscious and sub conscious - even having recurring dreams about them. To me school days is as fresh as the cooling breeze, or the morning's flower out of the night's stupor. So, friendship has many dimensions.

Love and friendship are they different, or they two parts of the same coin, obverse realities? The word love is the cornerstone of friendship, but like love, friendship also ends, its impermanence as Shakespeare has shown in his moving sonnets, cross currents between love and friendship in an eternal triangle of three lovers. The ambiguity of the sonnets between love and friendship has led to critics expatiate exponentially on these two concepts!

That, is it, the question of two very close male friends, in love with the same woman- streaming consciousnesses of conflict? Love then is used to denote the feelings for the opposite sex but we can love people universally.

Louis Fischer said Gandhi loved people individually and in masses.

Love then is also an abstraction, friendship individual based. It is these friends we remember or count upon, on a day to day basis.

I taught in a college for over eleven precious years. Many of my students are now my close friends.The classroom now has become classless! We may not meet friends for days or years, but they still remain as friends in our realms of life and reality.

A lot of Indian society is still conservative, so much so that friendship cannot be construed between the opposite sex - it is either love or marriage! What rubbish!

Everyday is friendship day, let's not get caught up in market 'realities' and exclusively reserve this day for August fifth. Everyday is Friendship Day, as long as we have Friends!

05-Aug-2012

More by : Ananya S Guha

Top | Analysis

Views: 3500 Comments: 1

Hey Ananya

Would like to connect with you. I am the Managing Editor of an International Magazine called eFiction India. Please write to me at nikhil.sharda@hotmail.com if you are interested in contributing to the magazine or editing it with me.

Thanks a lot

Nikhil Sharda
10-Oct-2012 12:13 PM

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