Remember the times of Sholay, when we used to have the unforgettable song - 'Yeh Dosti Hum Nahin Todenge'. Well, being 38 years old now, I guess I am one of the oldies now in a New India, but I remember with fondness that that song did more to cement friendships in the India of those days. Perhaps it was naivety on my part in my schooldays and college days to believe strongly that friends were for life. Friendship was a word, never used lightly. If we ever called anybody a friend, we did not need to say that it was for LIFE, for that was what we believed.
Switch to this era of Facebook and Orkut (now our very own desi version, Itimes), you will find people with 2000 friends, or even 20,000 friends. If you have less than hundred friends it means that you are not worth being listed there. 'Friends' - does the word mean anything now.
I remember one of my teachers saying that “friendship is not revealed by words or by saying that 'I am your friend', friendship is revealed by actions”. If we go by actions, I wonder where this concept of friendship is evolving in the New India, and India where the attention span of people is hardly more than an year, where exchanging a few chain emails every week is considered friendship, where sending smileys means a lot.
With Indian economy growing by leaps and bounds, we too like the rest of the developed world are tied firmly in the ratrace, each trying to outdo each other in acquiring the material things that are anyway going to be obsolete in a few years, leaving us to aspire for more. We hardly have any time for our friends, we hardly pick the phone and chat up with friends unless we have some work with them. We hardly take out the time to chat 'nothings' with our friends over a cup of coffee at the roadside tea stall. Friends are friends only as long you can deliver some professional benefits to them, else we dont even contact them for years at a stretch. At my age, I have seen so many 'friends' disappearing in the wilderness of the times, I wonder, if we would ever meet them ever again.
India is changing for the better, but I wonder if friendship is evolving from 'Yeh Dosti' to 'Woh Dosti'!!
