Friends – the crust of life.

Its late night on a friendship day and I suddenly got this idea to write something about friends, their impacts on my life and my present friends. Out of curiousness, I just googled \’friends meaning\’ and this is the result I got; \”A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.\” This might be the dictionary meaning of the word \’friends\’ but in this generation, friends mean a lot more than what it is defined. Its not just zeroed onto mutual affection. It travels to trust, care and adjustment. We often come across statements, there is no adjustment in true friendships and if you want to adjust, then its not a good friend you are having. But more often than not, everyone do adjust in friendship just for the betterment of this purest relation.

Friends, in my life, have been very scarce till my 12th standard. I did have some good friends but there really wasn\’t anybody with whom I was really comfortable with or may be because I wasn\’t comfortable for any of them. I have told this in one of my previous blogs. People frown at me when I say in my 14 years of school life (LKG to 12th) with the same batch in the same school, I am not in touch with anyone barring just one person. He is probably the only person who could adjust with me, may be! Having said that, I did have some good friends at various grades in that phase of my life. Its only because of one of them whom I really considered to be a good friend, I got this addiction towards cinema and I went to Chennai for my higher studies. I often wonder how my life would have been if there were no Facebook or Orkut. Even in school, I found solace in spending time in orkut and facebook chatting to unknown people. It was during one of my random chats in Facebook, I met a Delhi Malayali and pretty soon, we became close friends. But it didn\’t last long because of some \’mutual\’ friends we had. This is when I understood, trust is an important factor in friendships.

It was on a friendship day in 2011, we released our first short film titled \’Slam Book\’. I worked as the production controller in this work and it was the first time I was seeing a shooting set and how things work. I still remember on the eve of 2011 friendship day, all of us were sitting in our balcony in Nungambakkam flat and uploading on youtube. We were wondering how people are going to review it. It was the first tension moments of our lives. Years later, when I type this, I painfully understand none of them from that night is in contact with me and we don\’t share any contacts now.

It would be unfair if I don\’t mention few friends of mine when I write such a post on this day.

Whenever I meet a new person these days, I get comments on how friendly I am and how caring I am. To all of them, I have told I learned all this from one person whom I met in my Chennai life. I have hesitation to say, she made me who I am right now. She was my first best friend in my life and even now, though we ain\’t that close, we still talk and sometimes I end up crying on her shoulders over the phone call. She taught me the meaning of friendship and how to be a good friend. There are just so many memories with her which I would always cherish all through my life time. I will tell my kids about our friendship and teach them how caring and loving a friend should be. Swetha, if you are reading this, a Happy Friendship day! You are still the gem in my life.

She is not the only friend I had in college. There are a lot more, Joel, my only guy bestfriend even after 4 years, Akhil, my partner in crime and Grace, my lovely sister. Each one of them had a lot of impact in my life. Now when I look back, my college life was always about these four people and the fun we had. We, along with 4 others, formed the \’Cultural shocking\’ group of our college and man, what fun we had! Again I tell you, my juniors in college, NEVER EVER take a fight among friends seriously in college, because one day these are the only things which you will find good when you look back.

Professionally, I have met few people and out of them two names which I really would love to mention is Christy and Fahim. I had the biggest fight of my life with Christy one night at my home but it lasted only a week. He is still my most preferred editor and I must say, he is the most intelligent person I have met. Last month, one of my cousins just randomly asked who had the biggest impact in my life or rather who turned around my life. I didn\’t have to think for another second to say \”It\’s Fahim.\”  If I hadn\’t met him that night in IFFK, trust me, I wouldn\’t have achieved at least this much in short films. If I am dreaming about films right now, its only because of him.

\”A friend in need is a friend indeed\” is the most used quote about friendship. Unfortunately, I have always found myself short of having such a person. Its interesting how I was left to sunk in tough times and feel as if the only person in this universe. When I am in such a situation, what I really do is regret about my past and feel guilty for even senseless stuffs. Suddenly, I heard someone tell me \”Don\’t regret about your past. You did such things in the past because it made you happy then\”. I don\’t know what magic the person or the words had, but it made me smile. Two months later, I feel extremely blessed to have that person in my life as a best friend. Sometimes I feel the term \’best friend\’ is not enough to define what she is in my life. When I am stressed out or when I have my annoying mood swings, I can always depend on her. Her craziness and hyper talks will make me smile. Her dumbness will make me laugh and her songs will make me happy. Out of all the people whom I mentioned in this list, she is the only person whom I met online and turned out to be great friends. On this friendship day, let me be very honest, the only wish I have is to stay in touch with her, Advaitha, for all through my life and feel lucky.

When I look back at my life, the list of my present friends is very less to the people who left me. I had almost 20-30 friends in my life who consider me as a stranger now. Some just message me if its Onam or Christmas. Some doesn\’t even have my number and some have just removed me in Facebook. Its all weird, trust me. I am also responsible to a certain extent though.

Most times when I scroll on my news feed, I get the feeling Facebook is the best place to publicize quotes. One such quote is \”Best friends make the best couples.\” Having seen such incidents in my family itself, I respect that quote. But I am not sure it works always. Sometimes it can just destroy the friendship you share. Its always better to leave friendships stay so unless and until you really think you can take it to the next level. Just because you see such a quote, don\’t give it a shot because you know, you might end up hating yourself. Then again, don\’t regret your past! 😉

Oh I know, I could have wrote a beautiful article on friendship instead of bringing personal life onto this but this is more like a note to them to remind them how much they mean to me. I will write an article just on friendship, pretty soon, because I have a lot to blabber about the kind of \’friends\’ we see these days.

Happy Friendship Day to all my friends 🙂