The Joy of Old Friendships

Nisha JamVwal shares her thoughts on friendships these days and explains why one must prize their childhood friends

Sashaying down to my champagne cocktail, I was trepidatious. I was meeting school and college friends after sometime. I was surrounded by friends who looked the same, and yet I felt so different. I was introverted and brooding once, so different to the exuberant person that people see today. The girls from school – lovely, attractive and assured – acted like a meter to my change. Through them I realized how much has happened and how many lives I’ve lived through the journeys that mark my life.

A successful singer said, “My real guru is life; the realization that you are alone in this world came very early to me.” I’m momentarily stumped by the cynicism, but on second thoughts, I am hearing enough of the same in different expressions to have second thoughts on friends, family, neighbors, et al. Neighbors? They’re not even a nodding acquaintance. Relatives? The best you can fathom is mutual tolerance and wariness about being drawn into the quagmire of their problems.

Is there some big social change transpiring? Is the day around the corner when every ‘friend’ will be weighed in the scales of ‘use’, or worse, profit and loss? Even as I shuddered at the thought and thanked God for the friends I had, I told myself to think positive and I remembered some warm and wonderful friends that made life special. I thought the cocktail might turn out to be an afternoon of social ‘mwah mwah’ dos that are so hankered after by many. Something has gone askew in our priorities and perspectives that, if not addressed, would threaten the very well being and joy that we seek in our pursuit of meaning in life.

But what transpired that week has a lingering memory of being special. We were meeting after some years of nearly no communication and we’d moved into varying occupations. Some had gone up in life, some were homemakers. We’d changed somewhat in appearance. But none of these criteria robbed any of the old bonhomie. We laughed and ragged each other as we held forth through a rambunctious lunch that prolonged into tea and an afternoon as carefree as I’d had in a long time. We lent support to unhappy tales, felt proud of achievements and wanted the tiniest of details of our lives.

For all of you in school and college, savor the bonds you make now and cherish them, because these mostly lack agenda and reason. They exist for the sake of companionship, the real reason that friendships should actually exist for. In times when friendships are made with one eye on the watch you’re wearing, the car you drive and the designation on your card, a friendship made in a classroom for no underlying reason has a purity and beauty which may not be apparent to you just yet, but as life progresses  you shall see how invaluable it is.