Posts Tagged friends

The dynamics of human relationships

It’s strange how easily I get put off by the behaviour of some people, especially when I’m quite tolerant of the same or similar behaviour by some other people. Guess I am not as impartial as I want to be. Maybe you’d think of it as sick. Take your pick, it doesn’t affect me as much as you think it would, or perhaps should! ;-)

For example, I have some friends who call / mail me rarely. Let’s categorise these, for the sake of convenience, under “A”. I also have my share of friends who keep in touch quite regularly. Let’s categorise these, for the sake of convenience again, under “B”. Now, I’m not generally annoyed with my “A” friends as long as they don’t tell me things like “hey, why don’t you call me often?”; once they say that, I get really upset because I am the kind of guy who usually reciprocates people’s love many times over, and I feel hurt that they’re trying to place the responsibility for non-contact / rare contact entirely on my shoulders. Come on, it’s not like I stopped you from mailing / calling me!

Anyway, I digress. The thing is, much as I’m not irritated by the category A friends, I get put off that much more easily by the category B friends if they stop calling / mailing me with no explanation whatsoever. I’ve had such category B friends who haven’t a. returned calls, b. replied to mail, but who complain loudly when I fail to do the same occasionally. Man, I get really pissed off when they do that. But being a person who usually avoids confrontations (unless pushed to the extreme), I laugh it off or let it pass without comment. But until such absences are properly explained, I usually go crazy (when I think about those instances) trying to figure out why they did that to me: it’s like a splinter in my mind which will leave me peaceful only when it’s gone.

Now, the really interesting thing is, even among the category B friends, I have a few whose unannounced absences don’t bother me much. I haven’t been able to figure out why that’s so, short of coming to the rather unpleasant conclusion that I’m biased towards some :-( To paraphrase George Orwell, “All friends will be treated equally, but some will be treated more equally than others” !!

Just to make a few things clear: I’m not the categorising kind of person all the time, but I do like to sort things out once in a while, if only to know where I stand. I don’t believe that the measure of a friend’s love for you is the number of emails / calls you receive from him / her, but I do feel like I should constantly stay in touch with my friends because they mean so much to me.

Have you felt this way towards your friends? Do you treat all your friends the same way? Or is this madness peculiar to me?

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Good friends are like rare gems

I’ve heard it said that good friends are like good wine – both get better as they grow older. Not that this friend that I have in mind is old or anything, but you get the point, don’t you?

I think the first time we saw each other – more than six years ago – was when another friend of mine brought her to my office. I remember the bright face, the intelligent eyes, and a big, warm smile. It was not exactly a meeting, because after smiling and flinging a “Hi” at each other, we went our ways. But within a short period of time, we caught on really well, and very soon were chatting away for hours on the phone or the Net. It was an exciting time for me, because I was quite dumb, without any worldly experience to speak of, and she had already switched jobs twice (or more, I’m not sure), and so I could learn quite a few things from her. I was always in awe of the fact that she celebrated life like no one else I knew then did. She wasn’t afraid of many things, and you could trust her to speak her mind, damn the consequences; I admired that. At the same time, she knew when to hold herself back too. I remember one glorious Music Season at Madras when she, myself and another friend had a whale of a time listening to Indian Classical Music.

Her marriage was a happy occasion, with tons of friends and relatives. She met married life in the same way that she did anything: with gusto! Her husband turned out to be a terrific match, with a love of good life that equalled hers. I’ve watched with quiet happiness as they more or less waltzed through their years of marriage, now with a trip to Africa, and then a trip to Australia (her husband is the classic “Travelling Salesman”).

The first time I visited their home in Bombay was three years after I moved to Pune. But I enjoyed the trip thoroughly as it gave me a good opportunity to get to know her husband better. We went shopping, and had a lovely multi-cuisine dinner where I, as usual, almost made a fool of myself ordering an extra cup of ghee. Her husband saved me from the embarrassing situation I would have been in by cancelling it quickly! And the second time I visited them (this time on my bike), I made a mistake while coming back, which has now led to her calling me her “backtracker friend”! :-)

She may not be perfect, and may have faults that are all her own. But she’s dear to me, because she’s one of my best friends.

P.S.: Today is not the world friendship day or anything. In fact, I hate such “special” days. I celebrate friendship whenever I feel like it.

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