Today is August 3, Friendship Day. How does someone like me
will celebrate it? Someone like me - a person who really does not have too many
friends. Or do I? I have friends on Whats App, I am in touch with some ex colleagues
of mine and I had a best friend. I mean I had a friend who I had met when I had
just joined college, somewhere in 1992. We were friends till 2014. That’s 22
long years. For some period, we weren't in touch but somehow we managed to join
the missing dots. But this friendship day, we might not wish each other because
new dots have cropped up amidst us and this time the dots seem to be a jigsaw
puzzle.
Yet, this Friendship Day, I want to reminisce about
friendships and pay an ode to true and lasting friendships. Friends, the word conjures
up images of fun, excitement, togetherness and what not. The saying goes, blood
is thicker but when it comes to friendship, the thickness of blood really doesn't
matter. When you are young, friends are needed as help, or as a partner in
roaming about aimlessly. But as you grow older, they become a part of you. With
them, you can be as you are. It develops into a bond where even silence is
understood. After you have your own
family and kids, these friends become guides and note points. You want them to
share stories of motherhood, sometimes cheerful stories but sometimes about the
pain. And when you grow older? Perhaps, that’s the time you really need a
friend to talk to when no one else has the time to talk to you. May be a time
will come when one of you might never be able to speak anymore and might bid
adieu to this world first, yet, the memories remain and may be, they nudge you
to go further in the journey albeit alone so that soon you will reach the end
and there you may find your old friend standing, with a smile to welcome you.
Perhaps, that’s the beginning of a new journey. A step into a new world, reuniting with your
old friend again.
So, this Friendship Day, wishing all those who have won new
friends, and those who have lost old ones, and those who are yet to taste real
friendship and those who have been betrayed and those who have been blessed
with true friends, - wishing everyone a Happy Friendship Day. Make more friends
and fewer enemies.
