Friendship Rocks!

By Navin Sigamany @ Sulekha.com

Friends come in all shapes, sizes and styles. They always have. Though of late there are all kinds of 'new' types - chat friends, SMS friends, even wrong number friends. Anyway, this is not about any of them. Rather, this is about friendship - the ship that can never sink, according to the ageless wisdom enshrined in a movie song! I do not claim to be an authority on friendship - I cannot recount the history of friendship down the ages, though I have read about Damon and Pythias. Neither can I discourse learnedly on the ingredients of a great friend, let alone a great friendship. But like most of us, I've had, and continue to have, a host of friends - ranging from best friends, bum chums and bosom buddies to passing friends and one-journey friends. Drawing from my admittedly modest wealth of experience with various types of friends, what I have to say is this - friends are great to have around. And here's why.

First off, you can choose your friends. Well, most of the time you can. At other times they choose you. Which is also cool, considering the wisdom doled out in another movie - better to be with someone who likes you than with someone whom you like. Twisted but true. Coming back to the topic at hand, you get to choose your friends, which means that you are likely to share a lot of things with them. Which is really cool, till of course you meet the guy/girl both of you like.

The next best thing about friends is that you can borrow from them, without any feeling of guilt, remorse or shame. Most of this borrowing is of course limited to clothes, books, CDs and cassettes. In college, the list expands to accommodate two wheelers, four wheelers, notes before the exam, and for the select few, answer scripts during the exam. Hostel adds a whole new dimension to borrowing - toothpaste to towels, creams and lotions to socks and shoes, pens and pencils to bed sheets and buckets. Money of course figures on top of the list of things we would like to borrow from friends, but since in any given group of friends, everyone is almost always on the same level of being broke, this seldom happens.

Perhaps the best thing about friends is that you get to share a lot of things you cannot share with anyone else - your likes and dislikes, your fears and hopes, your aspirations and weaknesses - just about anything. Then there are all those trips to nowhere in particular, evenings spent lazing around on the beach or your terrace, days and nights spent in feverish anticipation and preparation for some event, the excitement when a project succeeds, the disappointment when Sachin is bowled for 14, the mad time spent jumping in puddles in the first rains, the time spent recovering from the cold you caught then, the curses when the rain doesn't show any signs of letting up after weeks... the list is virtually endless.