Hashtag #‘Friends like Family’; a perfect oxymoron …
… not to mention a dangerously overlooked one, of which I feel compelled to write in the first person, my thoughts & sentiments on this matter far more feverish and eminently less distant than usual, having myself fallen victim to the lure of ‘familial friendships’, heavily adorned with pledges of steadfast fidelity and everlasting affection that are typically both articulated and attended to under the influence of one or another mind-altering substance or circumstance.
I nonetheless can’t help but wonder if it is not a peculiarly Indian habit to want to subject the ‘institution’ of friendship to the incarcerating knots of family ties, for in all the years I lived outside my own country, and within the dynamics of the relationships that have endured, rarely if ever have I encountered the decidedly discomfiting & invariably treacherous breed of familiarity that is so common amongst my own people, which not only undermines each one’s composure and propriety, but also tramples upon the essence of what is meant to be a purely convivial relationship …
… Moreover, the virtues of a mutual respect for one another’s privacy & ‘separateness’ in a friendship (which above all serve to foster its chemistry and keep the element of novelty alive) appear to be altogether lost on my fellow citizens; if anything, the periodic tests of commitment & loyalty amongst so called friends are far more rigorous and taxing than those effected by two people bound by the institution of marriage, never mind family.
As much as these friendships pretend to both solicit & find comfort in the same informality one enjoys with one’s nearest & dearest, they do not in fact either permit or condone any type of casual behavior or negligence, each aspect of friendship contingent upon an unrealistic measure of mindfulness, obscenely demanding consistency of presence and almost perverse degree of resilience in being emotionally & socially bullied, blackmailed & quite simply kicked around.
Even whilst 20th century American play-right & screenwriter Tennessee Williams, (& co., since many claim to be the fount of the following wisdom), once stated:
“Friends are god’s way of apologizing to us for our families” …
… in India, the ‘penal servitude’ imposed by a bloodline is inarguably the lesser of two punishments.
One cannot even politely decline an invitation in the capital without being fiercely harassed if not altogether ostracized, deliver a solicited opinion that may be at odds with that of the solicitors and not find oneself target of character assassination, on the rare occasion leave ones allegedly closest friends off a guest list and not invite blood curdling acts of vengeance that might make the average Hollywood psychological thriller look like child’s play, and so on and so forth.
Friendship in India, or at least in the capital New Delhi, first and foremost demands the suspension of any and all semblance of autonomy; it then proceeds to skillfully uncover, masterfully exploit and shamelessly profit from the proverbial Achilles heels, each one convincing the other that he or she is their lone well-wisher … in the post-COVID era in particular, these counterfeit friendships are both nourished and sustained by ‘insta’-exhibitionism, deprived of which they are often lifeless, routine, hollow & just plain boring.
Even more of a charade are those friendships that are buttressed by longevity alone; bereft of any quality whatsoever, the deep-seated antipathy between two old friends is poorly concealed by the voluble, yet patently artificial demonstrations of empathy, mounted uniquely in times of tragedy … it is this brand especially that calls to mind the idiom, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” …
… and on that cynical note, to conclude what is thus far the shortest essay I have written, since the subject matter is best treated with an economy of words and surgical precision, let me simply say that in my experience, no-where else in the world does solitude come as such a relief, do the contours of one’s universe in isolation expand rather than contract and finally, does one find the safest harbor within oneself, as in my own home town, the big, bad, belligerent, bold & beautiful capital of incredible India …
… Indeed, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.