Friendship in Capsules

#Friendship rarely announces itself in grand gestures. More often, it arrives in the tiny moments of waiting, in a phone call, in a letter, in the easy familiarity that grows by meeting regularly and realizing eventually you are invisibly tied together. Else, what would you call the relationship between a care-taker and a terminal patient, both probably, fully aware, this won’t last. Or a Nanny and an infant. One, a mentally and emotionally balanced individual and the other who has just been pulled out from a really moist place into this big bad, painful and mad world. In between the infant and death, is life. To live we need to breathe. To keep breathing easy, we need peace and contentment. To have a contented life, we need healthy relationships. Usually, we call it a relationship if it has a longer time tenure. But, we can have small, yet rich and full relationships. Every relation has a life of its own. People need to know how and how much to nurture. We need to invest, for anything to grow – time, effort, energy, money, emotions, silences and words. Specially, in human relationships. after a point, it doesn’t matter, if both are contributing equal proportions. Because, the relationship is not measuring. The people in it are. And if people are counting, it will never be equal. We all want to win. If there is a winner, the other one is a loser. And the loser remembers. A friend doesn’t.

Friendship is a habit. It is the rhythm of the daily mundane life. In boarding school, we could play in groups, or walk with just one person. And it may not be even the same person, every day. It was the common habits and daily rituals that defined the relationship. Exactly why after school is over, the feeling transcends batches. It is no longer about the same batch anymore. Every girl and boy who passed out of that wooden gate had shared experiences, every day. We walked the same wild paths, sat on the same wooden bench, ate the same cold porridge, ran through the same echoing corridors, got ‘dhunned’ by seniors for the same silly mistakes, had the same teachers with nicknames living through centuries, loved the same monogram and sang the same school song. That kind of friendship is not for fun. It is made of survival. One friend remembers the dates, another the joke, a third kid remembers the real excuse but stays silent for the fourth to shine through the conversation. A batchmate may be the closest, but a schoolmate is an equal witness to the same skyline, buried in the memory of every alumni. It is important to mention here, it doesn’t matter, how many years have you spent together. Some people are not in touch even though they spent the growing decade together. Some have become real good friends, with the age difference qualifying well beyond mother-daughter or father-son and the other possible combinations!

Some friendships show courage without pretending to be heroic. They help a person face the world a little steadier. They make distance from loved ones manageable, the loneliness of being far from parents becomes softer, the bullying becomes a little less tiring, and the hospital stays a lot less solitary. They show that real character is not in how someone behaves when everything is hunky dory, but in the small, unguarded moments. That is the hidden architecture of friendship — not the big declarations, but the repeated kindnesses. There is also something deeply revealing about the people who disappear and re-appear again and again in life, or in ordinary situations. A batchmate always ending up paying that last Rs. 2/- short for the bun omelet, the one last movie ticket, or the full class contribution that you cannot afford this time. Then, there is a friend who does not ask for much, only an assured, silent evening walk. Today, do you listen to someone when there is nothing to gain from them? Do we remember names? Do we stay patient when the same story is told twice? True relationships, do not demand a dramatic answer. Just a humane presence.

Some memories stay, not because they were extraordinary. But because they were truly ordinary, in exactly the right way. They remind us that friendship is often less about being inseparable and more about the reassurance that there is someone who knows. S/he won’t judge me. Infront of whom, I can laugh, cry, shout or just sit without a word for hours. I can become and stay, the real me, always.

1996 Batch