The Covid - 19 pandemic has tested us in dreadful ways. The loss of many loved ones, not to mention severe economic hardships, have taken us down a very rough road and some have had to climb mountains too high.
It has also shown many, as it did us, the value of friendship. From Kinder garden to post graduation we make many friends, but as years pass on we forget them because from schooling life to college life our behavior, attitude changes.
Yes, they were good friends, but we soon found that they were the greatest of friends. They didn't have a dog in the hunt, In today's generation friendship is quite better than relationship because relatives shares ego, but friends share their problems and try to solve them. We all celebrate friendship day once a year, So that we all meet at least once a year.
Obviously, this made one wonder about the magic of friendship and how valuable it was. In truth, its significance is lost on many of us here because of our over - valuation of relatives.
Friendship is a gift of modernity, of that there is no doubt. There is, of course, that quip about not being able to choose your relatives as you would refer friends, but this witty aphorism hides a deeper truth. As friendship is about choice and when you can exercise friendship in interpersonal ties, that's a sure sign you are living in modern times.
In the past, you never really had friends. Of course, you had relations but then as a package deal, you also had what sociologists call, the "tyranny of cousins" In tradition, relations terrorized the new wife, discriminated against the girl child, stifled ambition but otherwise provided security and predictability. Joint families where all lived together happily are the best example of all that is good, and far from good, in a world dominated by relations.
Till the early 1990s most working - class, long - distance migrants to Delhi, Mumbai, Vape, Surat or Tirupur followed the breadcrumb trail initiated by their rural kin and or caste folk. From the late 1990s, most certainly from the year 2000 onwards, at least a third of migrant workers, according to my estimate, moved from country to town because they were altered to job opportunities by friends. In Tirupur, India's hosiery capital, over half the migrants, some even from Bihar's Kisangani, came because their friends had called them.
Further, the manpower profile of India records that over 63% of cultivators are above 60 years of age, as many young people have gone elsewhere in search of work. The old folks look long down the road, but their hopes set with the sun every evening, as their children are in no hurry to return.
Across faith and caste
From around the mid - 1990s, I also noticed friendships in rural settings, including gatherings at tea shops, that cut across caste and religion.
History has been quite even-handed, but we tend to believe that in tradition we were cuddly and cozy with all our cousins. This has clearly undermined what we owe to our friends.
You must be logged in to post a comment.