About friends, friendships and patriarchy

                  “…It takes only one friend … to work miracles.”

                                                                            - Henry Miller                                                                                              

World would indeed be a black hole of gloom but for the balmy sunshine of friends who, we know, come in myriad avatars. I enlist a few.

Some are langotia yaars and hum pyalas, the bosom friends as we say. Before them we let our hair down and open our hearts inside out without shame or blush; pour out our deepest secrets, share our highs and lows and smiles and tears. They stand by you through thick and thin and their friendship is a balm that soothes the nerve, unknots the heart, elates and elevates the soul.

Some friends are intellectual, enlightened types whose torch of knowledge and erudition removes the cobwebs of ignorance from your minds. A conversation with them  is a cerebral feast. You get to hear some thought-provoking quote, an interesting phrase, a pithy saying, some new insight into life/world … and so on. Your batteries are charged up.

Then there are the tad avuncular types who revel in dispensing wisdom – even a little admonishment – and try to keep your wanton spirits in check by good counsel. They ensure that you don’t cross the ‘Lakhshman Rekhas’ and remain within your own skins as you script the trajectory of life. Small rebels like me may not relish their company much but their sincerity and affection to ensure for you a smooth ride in life is beyond question.

My most beloved of course are the special breed: the witty and humorous. These friends I adore. Wellsprings of jokes, wisecracks and anecdotes, they tickle your ribs making the place resound with loud bursts of hilarity. In the present stressful times when laughing our hearts out has become a rarity, how invaluable such friends are can hardly be gainsaid.

We also come across fair-weather friends in life, the matlabi yaars, who just befriend you to exploit your vulnerabilities, take advantage and then vanish. However, in the bargain, you learn important lessons in life sharpening your sense of discernment about people/world around you.

 

 In today’s AI-powered world we have a newly minted category of ‘virtual’ friends on social media. This is a world unto itself and hard to describe for a poor me. Though always wary, still, however, the temptation to venture into this cyber-realm is irresistible – even indispensable –  being  an easy, finger-touch way  not only to make friends but also to inter-connect, transact businesses  and stay in step with daily life,  risks notwithstanding.

And then – let’s hold our hearts and blush a little! – there is the special class of friends of the opposite sex: the so-called girlfriends and boyfriends–  who bestow the extra spark on our lives though with all the attendant highs and lows, sighs and sorrows.

Lucky indeed are those who in the theatre of life find friends and nurture friendships. And as you journey along and age, and the vile fiend called loneliness begins to grab the private, sacrosanct spaces of your heart and mind, the value of good friends comes knocking at your consciousness more resoundingly than ever before.

                                                                                                *

In the inky dusk of twilight often when I sit sipping beer in the balcony watching the blushful Phoebus kissing us goodbye, I fall into a reverie. Blessed have I indeed been in having had friends almost of all kinds, though those of the last variety have been either elusive or fleeting. I am sure many of my generation would have been no luckier than me in this respect. I blame it all on the patriarchy that reigned supreme in our middle-class milieu – as it still does – compounded by the British-imposed Victorian values/misogynist pseudo-morality drawing a wedge between man and woman. So we grew up with labyrinthine tunnels of taboos, guilts and shames to negotiate this gender-chasm. But happily, internet-empowered, now the women are unscrewing their patriarchal fetters and man-woman friendships/relationships/ (‘live-ins’) have become routine and normal … and, dare I say, rightly so. For, nothing warms the cockles of the heart and dissipates the lurking loneliness of our holed-up lives (worsened by the present encircling political/climatic gloom closing in on humanity) more than a hearty banter, a sly joke, a flirtatious wink, gup-shup or a thought-provoking conversation with the opposite sex– preferably over a small drink by the winter fire! It boosts the depleting dopamine levels (if not the testosterone) of the old and the ageing and is a soothing balm despite what the monotonous ‘monogamists’, misogynists, patriarchs, priests and ‘panches/sarpanches’ amidst us might say!

                                                                                                ***