YOUR 7AM FRIEND.

YOUR 7AM FRIEND.

So there I was talking to a friend of mine who stays alone in the city, actually works alone in the city, with her family in a different state and I was talking generally about how boring festivals like Diwali are when you are alone in a lodge/hostel room while the rest of your colleagues are off celebrating with their families and the talk slowly veered around to friendship, best friends, close buddies and the recently much hyped 3AM friendships – where you designate any friend (preferably one without an irate/jealous spouse) as the one you can call without hesitation at any time of the day or night and demand they come over immediately to satisfy any issue/fancy of yours which arises after midnight and which cant wait till sunrise.

And so this girl was asking me “So can I count on you to be my 3AM friend?” and I answered truthfully “Hell no, don’t count on me like that. At best I can be your 7AM friend- I sleep so soundly that even a canon let off near my head won’t wake me up mid-sleep- let alone a ringing mobile phone. So the best I can do is wake up at 6AM, see the missed call on the mobile and get to you by 7AM. Is that acceptable?” Needless to say such candor on my part was not received with the appreciation honesty deserves but was derided as inadequate friendship. Well that's the way of the world, isn't it?

AGREE TO DISAGREE

AGREE TO DISAGREE

So there I was talking to a friend of mine and he said “we never seem to agree on anything do we?” and I reacted with a “so?.....” and left it hanging there as I left for the day. All the way back home I was wondering about what makes me have such great friendships even with people I have nothing in common with at first sight. But then again, I decided, we do have one thing in common, obviously, one vital thing and if you haven’t guessed what it is yet, hold on, its something called “maturity”. Yes that’s right, when you spend time with people who are mature and have no hang-ups and insecurities (like how most of my friends are) then you can listen to and acknowledge differences of opinions without being offended by it or the speaker who expresses it. It’s only people who are unsure of themselves and their own opinions who want/crave like-minded people to always agree with them. Having a different point of view is not necessarily a bad thing in my view. We are sometimes restricted by our own life experiences and it takes someone with a different life journey to shake us out of our complacency and show us a different life.

Like in the movie Aladdin when the super hit song “A whole new world” (written by Alan Menken) and sung by Aladdin and Princess Jasmine contains the words “I can show you the world…….A whole new world, a new fantastic point of view,……..” and that’s what friendships are supposed to do – show you a new point of view, taking you beyond your own limitations of imaginations. And in the course of that if we feel we don’t always agree it’s a good thing according to me. I am a great lover of  masala films- the dishyoom, dishyoom ones with two duets/four fights formula…while I have a few friends who watch Korean movies (or as I term them “award” movies) and keep raving about them all the time.  And you know what? we get along well with each other because we might not agree on our choice of movies but we are both, in the end, movie fans. Similarly I have friends who swear by Ayn Rand while I regard the old hag with distaste, still it doesn’t stop us discussing books in general and being book-worms together. And I could go on and on with examples.

In the end it all boils down to this- if we are intelligent and mature (and not necessarily in that order) it doesn’t matter to us what our friends eat or what they watch or what we agree on….we are human beings all and we have our individual quirks and none of them makes a whit of difference to our friendships. And that’s how being friends with me feels like. So tell me – are you mature enough to tolerate me when I disagree with you? Do tell…