Tag: friends

  • Friendship grants

    In Rediff’s review of Kai Po Che, there’s a line that goes “Quoting from Bollywood, impromptu excursions and taking each other for granted without guilt is the prerogative of buddy-dom,…” That’s probably arguable, but if it is right, I now understand why my buddy count has been low since inception.

    The first – excursions – I think, can be handled. That’s despite my obsession with planning. 🙂 The second is a completely different story though. I hate taking people for granted and if I end up doing it and realising it later, I get guilt pangs even after apologising. It probably comes from the premise that I hate being taken for granted and thus the “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” gets applied. (more…)

  • Imago

    That I worship Bill Watterson and simply adore Calvin & Hobbes is not a secret. In fact, it mostly irritates people when i quote from that unique mix of humour/sarcasm/wit and profundity. But no, this is not a gushing post. A few days back, when a friend was talking about her kids, I told her to be thankful that they weren’t like Calvin. She said one of them does have imaginary friends. I am not sure about kids these days, but I simply cannot remember any imaginary friends I might have had in my childhood. To be very fair to everyone concerned, I am quite befuddled even when it comes to recognising real friends of that era and erm, a few eras later too.

    But I wonder about the character of these childhood imaginary friends, and why they exist. Is it loneliness? Considering the minimal baggage that we have at that young age, are they confidants of doubts and thoughts that we think we can’t share with others, even if they are of the same age? Calvin has his club, theories about society and education, ‘scientific experiments’ etc which he shared with Hobbes. Is it because he felt that he would be laughed at, if he shared them with others?  Hobbes usually attempts to give him a more mature perspective on all the stuff he discusses. I’d like to ask the kids with imaginary friends about the conversations. 🙂

    Maybe, as we grow up, our baggage grows and as we conform to the norms around us, we figure out that imaginary friends have to go? Or it is perhaps a need that gets filled or forgotten about amongst other priorities, as we acquire new real people – friends, relatives or any other relationships along the way, and maybe figure out that we can share different things with different people, and not have to reveal ourselves totally to everyone? And that takes away the reason for having an imaginary friend to whom we confide all?

    Real people bring their own baggage, they perhaps shield us a bit, and tell us things that we want to hear. They perhaps validate our beliefs and thoughts and inferences, either because they don’t want to be the people who deliver the bad news or they don’t care enough. Of course, I am not taking away anything from the good friends that we manage to get, if we are lucky enough – the conscience keepers. But they’re human too, and their objectivity would waver, they’d have their biases. Perhaps, we should build an imaginary friend all over again, our own objective self, one which can show our own prejudices without fear of retribution.

    until next time, object of my imaginary attention 🙂

  • Lost Universes

    Sometime back, I got an email forward – A Violinist in the Metro, about the world famous musician Joshua Bell, who, in 45 minutes, played 6 Bach pieces, with a violin worth $3.5 million, at a metro station in Washington, and collected $32 for the effort. A couple of days back, he had sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats had averaged $100. The incident was a social experiment by Washington Post to check out whether we perceive beauty in a commonplace environment and whether we stop to appreciate it. The findings are a testament of the fast paced life we live, and the things we miss out on.

    But a few other facts in this incident interested me. For one, the crowd segment that paid the most attention to the musician were children. Their parents had to forcibly tug them away. Even if we are cynical and claim that its just curiosity, and not an appreciation of music, I still wonder about our life graph, and the part where we lose our innate curiosity. And its not just curiosity, its innocence, its a lot of other things that we lose on the way.

    When I meet friends from school or college, I sense they’ve changed, and so have I. Attitudes,mindsets, behaviour, all transforming themselves according to the experiences that life throws at us. And because of this, I am not able to relate to them the way I used to at an earlier point in time. A part of me that is perhaps lost forever. Even if I tried to re create it, it would be resisted by the current me.

    The other portion in the incident that interested me was that after the performance, there was no applause or recognition. People just moved on, oblivious to the phenomenon they didn’t perceive. I wonder if Joshua Bell was disappointed. Perhaps, if you’re a musician of that caliber, you would have passed the stage where you needed a stamp of approval. Or is he just like me? An unconfident performer of life, who looks around apologetically if he has upset any balance. Perhaps if i could perform like a carefree child, I could get back the curiosity and the other things that I’ve lost.

    This stream of consciousness reminded me of something I’d read about in the novel Space – a space shuttle’s flight. As it ascends into space, at different levels it discards different parts, parts that were useful to get it to that point, but useless after they’ve served this utility. And after completing the mission that it was sent for, it blazes a path back through the atmosphere, burning all except its core. It lands in a place far away from the place of its origin, and time has passed while all this is happening. In a strange way, it reminded me of the way lives are lived – at massive speeds, too fast to notice the beauty of the vast expanses of space around, to achieve something which is relevant only in a very small context, burning up with the hope that all that is being done is worthwhile, and perhaps in a lost, melancholic way, deciding that since anyway the life is to be lived, might as well live it with a mission, however inadequate it seems.

    until next time, touchdown

  • Faces in the crowd

    The thought started with a tweet of mine sometime back- “if some of my twitter friends lived geographically closer, my real social life would rock too :|” At least one blogger and now microblogger seemed to think so too. Why Twitter friends? Because on Facebook, and earlier Orkut, its mostly reunions or keeping in touch with those you already know. They are what i call contextual friends – made by us at some point in time at school, college or at some workplace. Their relevancy decreases with time and space. Yes, that is generalisation, and I do have a way of coldly analysing it. Humour me 🙂

    Blogging and Twitter work in a different way. You guys read this blog because you like the content, or you have to laugh twice a week at how a guy exhibits his lack of writing skills so blatantly to the world. Anyway, the majority of you do not know me from reality. Now increase and decrease the number of characters (people and letters respectively 😉 ) and you get Twitter. So in the case of blogs and twitter, you first get to know people virtually, and if all works well, you perhaps might meet up really. Now, in my case, except for a few meetings (that i can count on one hand) and one blog meet (which reaffirmed that I shouldn’t be attending them) I have kept my anti social record quite clean. 😀

    But the Twitter statement came because I’ve come across at least a couple of people on Twitter, with whom i have vibed splendidly. While it started off in my characteristic guarded manner, over a period of time, I’ve been able to be truly me, and not do anything for acceptability, with them.

    Let me elaborate a bit on this. In reality, we befriend people with whom we have a few things in common. There are some traits of theirs which we don’t particularly like, but since the net takeout is positive, we continue the relationship. Some of us, knowing that others dont like a particular trait, play it down in front of them, to be more acceptable. This is something I’ve grown to hate, and which along with my occasional penchant for “Hey, spade”/switching off, would partially explain the decrease in my real social activities.

    In reality its very difficult to tap people on their back, ask them ‘hey, are you interested in bollywood, F1, spirituality, music….and subscribe to certain views’ and then have sensible discussions, where we can even agree to disagree. I think virtuality makes it easier, but the snag then, is geography. The other snag is that it will push me deeper into the anti social shell, because now I know kindred souls exist, albeit far away.

    until next time, i still agree to a bit of socialism though 🙂