A bond called friendship...

The journey of life till now has been pretty much good for me. I had my shares of ups and downs. Clashes between good times and bad times, times of frustration, times of satisfaction, times when I felt on top of the world, times when I felt I could never recover from a fall and so on and so forth. My friends (apart from my parents, of course) played a huge role. They were my support system, foundation pillars of a building called ‘ my life’. I am talking, of course, of my circle of some very good friends. We shared our best and worst times together. I remember those old times we played with each other, clapped each others hands in joy, shared our small joys and sorrows, maybe even cried when we were unhappy when we were younger. Lately it is more the company of each other that is important. All of us meet each other every day….in the same place…..near my building….and then go out somewhere……maybe catch a snack…….all the indian fast food…..Bhel puri and sev puri from the ‘Bhel wala Bhaiyaa’ , Veg toast sandwich from the local sandwich store…called ‘Gupta Sandwich’ etc. People ask me, “Why do you meet your friends every day? Its not that you hang out in some cool place or something, you just meet them every day and chat, arent you out of topics by now, what is the attraction in meeting them every day? Its not like you are meeting some lovely lady who is your ‘girlfriend’? You are just meeting boys….who are friends…..of course….but still everyday?” The answer to that question is simple and yet it is annoyingly complex in terms of the number of reasons…..I’ll give you the simple answer. The answer is that there are some matters which you can disclose only to your closest and best friends. Its that simple. Parents can be talked to freely, but even there, there is a limit to this ‘freeness’ which is not there with your best friends. (This can be vice versa too in some other matters). So the thing with friendship, is that it starts between people with some small common interest (like say, 2-3 boys who used to stay in the same colony and loved to play cricket in their younger days…..became friends!) and if nutured and cared for develops into a strong bond called ‘Friendship’. True friendship is that which remains intact, even after the times change, people change, conditions change…..even after you have a misunderstanding with your friend or after he or she has hurt you in some way, in fact, once it has been through all these phases it grows stronger. Till now, friendship for me has been laughter and jokes all the way…..we used to pull each others legs and laugh as hard as we could. It was ok at that time, but now things have changed, we are all older, into our early 20s and more mature, I used to feel sadened by this change a few months back , I used to feel we are losing the old times……but now I know that people have started speaking out their minds, their innermost thoughts in front of friends…..I have also come to realise that there are sensitive issues which shouldn’t be laughed at…even that is not allowed in true friendship. This has been hard learnt lesson for me……me, someone who adamantly refuses to believe that times change…..and its laughter all the way!!!!