Ships that don’t sink?...I don’t think so

Recently I saw this movie. Before sunrise. It’s an English movie starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. It’s a very well made film and discusses a lot of intellectual stuff and realities of life.

So this movie is about a boy and gal who meet on a train and decide to spend a day together and in the process fall in love. But they are from different countries the guy being an American on his way back and the girl being French. So now they have this problem. How will they meet again? But they both decide that they don’t want to exchange phone numbers because relationships over long distances have a way of disintegrating mysteriously. They do not want this memory that they share marred by phone calls which, for all they know could become infrequent and rare and thereby creating a rift in their relationship. They decide to meet six months later at the same place, Vienna. Do they meet? You find that out for yourself.

But when I saw this scene where they discuss what could possibly happen if they exchanged phone numbers or addresses, it triggered something. I had a sense of déjà vu. Not that it had happened in many of my romantic relationships but that it had infact happened with all my friends.

It is quite a wonder if we sit back and think, about where all the friends you make right from the time you started learning alphabets, went. All those people. Hundreds and hundreds of them. You stuck to them, they stuck to you. We proclaimed that we would remain friends forever and never once did we think about the possibility that five years down the line that we probably would not recognize each other and may not even know where each other is. We placed more value on this relationship more than anything else. Our friends meant more to us than family. But where are they now? I certainly don’t know where all my friends are. Even with orkut,myspace, facebook and all this social networking I simply don’t know where they are. And well to be frank that probably is not a worry at all to any of us now.

Why not? 

Because the definitions of words have changed though we refer to them by the same words. So friendship is not the traditional Best friends Forever stuff but it is companionship. Bonding is not about knowing your friend to such a level that, ‘you can think what he is thinking’,but it is about ‘hanging’,’chilling’. So spending time with your friends is not about sharing thoughts which mean the most to all of you or jus sharing other equally important but inane stuff, but it has become a practice of just watching movies together.

‘We are still friends because we go to the movies together twice a year’.

The only people who really bond are people who share something common. Like smoking, drinking or dope. What if you do not do any of this stuff?

Well’ in that case it’s a lonely road for you, my friend. Of course I don’t mean you are my ‘friend’. I am just saying that because it sounds cool.

So I sit back in my chair and think about all my close friends right from the time I put my tiny feet in a uniform trouser.

At that early phase we had a gang. Of course we were in KG but still we were a gang. We were five in number. We did not know what fear was because we did not know any alphabets so we did not know any four letter words. One had serpent in his name. Nag. One was a Vayu progeny. Maruthi. One was small like a Vishnu avatar. Hari. One had a name of a sage though he was not one in any sense .Kaushik. And me? I was the Sun himself. We terrorised the school. Of course the teachers knew nothing about us because though we were the Famous Five we were the Secret Five also. We were together for five years. After that, Three of the Generals transferred to a better establishment and one was going away from Duty because of personal reasons. For two years I did not hear from any of them. After all there were no cell phones at that time. After those painful two years I go to this establishment where my old Generals are and to my astonishment I find that they have ‘moved on’. That was my first lesson in life.

I do not know about diamonds but Friends are not forever.

I form a new gang. This was a big one though at the heart of it only two of us were controlling things. One was the Pampered Spoiled brat who wore Blazers to school for his birthday and brought the whole class lunch almost every day. We would have killed each other for his mother’s home cooked chapphathis and a unique side dish. The other one with the control was the wise and unruly me. There was another famed member. We called him The Auto. The reason for his codename is “Confidential’. There was another who was as wise as me if not wiser and bolder and much taller with victory etched forever in his name. Vijay- the six foot fourteen year old. The lot of us stayed together for five years. And in those five years we went through a period of Cold War with the opposite sex when our hormones had just started acting up. After our reign the time for another crossroads. To stay or not to stay in CBSE. That is the question. Most of our loyal members chose State over the Central and though I preferred Central, since I did not want to lose the whole gang again I chose State. But Fate played its cards differently. We were like Jokers in a pack of cards. We got shuffled randomly among the sections and at the end of this game the gang was no more functional as the members were scattered among the different sections of masses. It was time for recruitment again.

Once again the warriors parted ways and the army had to be built from scratch. Among the old fellows only The Auto was near. And still faithful to the cause. The new army was formed. But now the new environment caused an army of diverse soldiers. Rogues and scoundrels we were, intellectuals we were not. The Auto though still a Loyal Soldier was pushed to the background. He chose a different path and he chose well. He chose the path of Pseudointelligence which was held in high regard in State where how intelligent you were was measured by the marks you scored which in turn was dependent on your ability to learn things by rote. Among the rest of the Soldiers four rose to the forefront. The one with music in his language. The Mallu- Hari. The Athlete- Chinu. The Wise Giant- Ram and of course me in an all new avatar of Dirty,rotten,Scoundrel! There was also a loyal member though not entirely accepted by everyone. He was the Jester. Our friends would know him for his confession of love to the girl of his dreams. A simple but yet profound poem he wrote for her and boldly read it out to her in the vicinity of her friends.

“I like you. You like me?” Which was followed up by her quick and equally endearing response,” Are you mad?”

There was also the passive but yet impressionable Hermit with silent wit as a weapon. His name was Datta. There was also the Introvert. There were also many Know-it-alls!

Those were the best of times. Those were the worst of times. Best of times because we made lots of ‘friends’ especially in the fairer sex(One of them screamed and said she would call the Police when I went behind her to ask her how she was, couple of years back. A weird thing memory is. To her once a friend I was, but now became I the Stalker). Worst of times because I slowly increased my status from Best guy academic in class to Most wanted Self destruction Expert. Especially among the teachers. They tried their best to exorcise the Beast but to no avail and which finally led to my ostracization. That was when I started losing contact with my fellow camapigners. And it was during these two years that The Auto introduced me to his cousin. The Almost Albino- TRB. He would become one of the few people with whom I still maintain contact.

After those two years of school which was the last two years, I never saw a lot of them again on a regular basis. Somehow everybody was too busy for a reunion.

College is said to be many things but a place to make real friends, it is not. So many things happen and a lot of them come out of their cocoon and try to do new stuff like talking to girls only after they enter college. Along come the rewards of peer pressure- Cigarettes and booze. I made a few friends with whom the disintegration began in the phase of four years itself. There was the Power man- Shakthi, the Don Quixote of our class with personal tragedies and weight issues. The other one was The Uncle with whom I had a falling out. And there was the The Nut-Case who was on the same of the same wavelength as me as far as intellectual pursuits were concerned though he was more ambitious.

In the six years of college I also made another friend. Another Hari. The Sportstar.

There have been so many friends and a lot of close friends through the years but at the end with how many of them am I still in proper contact with?

The Sage.The Brat. The Auto. The Jester. The Almost Albino. The Uncle. The Power. The Sportstar and The Nut-Case!

Nine .

It has dwindled down to a mere nine people. And its not that I maintain regular contact with all of them on a regular basis. I just know where they are and they can be considered friends because of that. It has been a long time since I spoke to The Auto,The Brat or the Sage. The Power also seems to be very busy with a lot of personal issues.

The Nut can be called a friend because I trust him and so can The Sportstar but how things will go with Sportstar only time will tell as it has been a very recent acquaintance.

Where are my friends when I need them? Does the word ‘friend’ hold any semblance of meaning at all? Or where was I when these people needed me? Surely more than one of them needs support of some kind. But I am here wasting my energy and time writing blogs because that’s easy to do than ACT.

Love has become corrupted. It is no more a romantic notion about selflessness and a promise of unconditional care. It is a weapon of selfish manipulation and emotional blackmail. Love of all sorts has been plagued by the darker side. Even the love between Family members. Parents are worried that their kids will leave them on the streets and the young ones are worried as to why  parents are wary of the idea of ‘Chosing your own partner’.

Love has been this way for years now. Now Friendship is seeing the same plight. Friendship may become just another word in the Dictionary which future generations would be unfamiliar of or like many practices today, it may become a farce, like the concept of justice.

Friendship- the ship that never sinks? In what sense? Is it a metaphor for Strong Bonding? Or is it a metaphor for selfish mutual dependence where I steer the ship to keep you alive because you have got the extra life jacket and you hold the Jacket as insurance because you don’t know how to steer it?

Is it a symbiotic relationship like it traditionally was or is it a parasitic relationship?

The word Friend does have an End. The word friend also has within itself the word Fiend- a demon. A supernatural being of evil. Like Satan.

Friendship- a cause for pain and instrument of selfish manipulation? Work of Satan?

You know who I am and I Believe Friendship is well on the way of becoming a Myth!