Happy Friendship Day

Do you ever just think about the first time you met someone and compare it to where you guys are right now and it’s like damm who knew this would happen?

Today happens to be friendship day- the first Sunday of August; another “special” day that we have adopted and given a tag to. Guess there are lesser “normal” days now compared to these “special” days.

Sadly, a day that celebrates the relation that is the very celebration of life and all things good and bad about it has been reduced to sending the same forwarded message to one another, when you get text images from people you haven’t even spoken to in a long long time and will not speak to unless it’s their birthday or yours.

There are people who find and make great friends wherever they go. These are the kind of people you envy in life- thinking how can a person manage to have so many great friends right around them, when you can barely find a couple of people who you can really talk to.

But then all of us, including these enviable characters; have days when you are trying to sleep late in the night but are unable to do so as something is eating you up from the inside but you don’t exactly know what? But then you look around and you realize that maybe the people around you may not be the best option to talk about it, so you start scrolling through your phone contacts searching for that name who you could call and talk to, and when you do so, the conversation usually flows for hours at a stretch as if time has come to a standstill and that the two of you have never lived afar and can still understand each other as you go along in life. It is generally after a phone call like this one that you truly feel like there are people other than your parents who really care for you; and it’s generally when these calls don’t get picked up, or when you can’t find that person to talk to, when we feel the loneliest.

Who you call up at times like this one keeps changing over the years. And sometimes, on one of those nights when you aren’t able to sleep and are wondering about life and all things related to it, you do think why this person keeps changing over the years. Why can’t you have them as constants in your life, just like your parents?

Why can’t those people with whom you had long phone conversations about homework to the next skit or activity that you could put up to the crazy ideas of doing something new to that girl or boy who you caught looking at you in the class to exam preparation to movie outings be a constant in your life?

Why can’t those people with whom you discussed how life was after you left schooling to telling them about the new things in your life to the new friends that you are making and the new experiences you are having be a constant in your life?

Why can’t the ones you call after you are a few pegs down, the ones you spoke to for suggestions and help as you fell in and out of love; who were the first to hear your happy times and who saw your tears and frustrations, helping you to rise and shine above it, be a constant in your life?

Why can’t the people who you call to discuss that change is the only constant, and talk about all the people who at some point were very close to your heart; who you thought would be together in your joys and sorrows across life and not in phases, be a constant in your life?

As you sit on this friendship day seeing these forwarded messages, initially feeling nothing to slowly maybe feeling pissed at this culture to beginning to miss all those people who were once the very center of our lives who have been reduced to absolute strangers now, only springing up in the tales that you tell your “new friends” about and then getting all sad about the same; you wish you could do something about it and try and reach out to those people.

Maybe that’s the whole point of friendship day. To remember and maybe try and get back in touch with all those people who were the things that we looked forward to at some phases in our lives. Maybe, to call them up, reach out to them in some way or the other and remember the good and bad times that you’ve shared.

And maybe, just maybe; some of those constants from some of the phases of your life could become constants in this phase of your life too.

HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY EVERYONE.