Whether BFFs are for life or not, it is human to think your closest friendships eternal. Modern relationship equations reveal breakups between pals to be as traumatic as divorce or abandonment. Being ghosted by a friend is the new-age Shakespearean tragedy. The platonic has overtaken the passionate, with intimacy more layered than it used to be.
With technology going all mercurial on us, and keeping in touch more a social media occurrence, hanging out can be online. Sudden closeness can be a prelude to just as sudden rifts. Digital ‘katti’, the oldies may say, is not as heartbreaking as Raj Kapoor singing ‘dost dost na raha’, but millennials may disagree. Finding your tribe is perhaps more crucial today, when no joint family is waiting at home to hold your hand.
Friendship anthems change lyrics from era to era. 'Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge', 'Tere jaisa yaar kahan, Dil chahta hei', 'Tera yaar hoon main'… Companions are a celebrated motif in cinema, the song and dance of it. Increasingly we are seeing either of the friends not getting the heroine (Dostana, where John Abhram and Abhishek Bachchan made a great twosome) or the friend dumping the bride on wedding day simply because his best friend can’t stand her (Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety). Male friendships where boys will be boys had always been a Bollywood tradition, but this trend of prioritizing friendships over the love interest is slowly becoming a common trope. Same-sex banter is preferred to a boring hetero-coupling by audiences.
Also read: International Day of Friendship: 7 famous literary bonds between authors and their animal friends
But where can one find a face-to-face friend? With a lot of offices now virtual post-Covid, and with regular attendance no longer required – where previously eagle-eye employers watched when exactly you punched in and when exactly you punched out – the parameters of physical space itself have changed. Running into coworkers is now not easy; you can take the lift or the steps, it is just you.
Still, when colleagues come together in unity and amity, they are a force to reckon with. As television host Ellen DeGeneres and, more recently, pop star Lizzo found out, hell hath no fury like a bunch of friends ganging up against allegations of toxic workplace or sexual harassment. Friendships can move mountains.
Sitcoms that feature friends have always been universally popular. Seinfeld, Three’s Company, F.R.I.E.N.D.S., Full House, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, Derry Girls, New Girl, Girls… Who is not a sucker for a well-written pal plot? The bonhomie between people who know each other well and indulge in good-hearted ribbing is like warming your palms over a fireplace on a winter night.
Life outside of sitcoms, however, alerts us to the real-time dangers of careless words that alienate those from us who mean the most. Camaraderie comes without a manual, alas. Buddies ideally should not be high-maintenance, with back-slapping and backchat falling into place easily, but friendship can be a tricky art. We can’t all be like Karen Walker who says in Will & Grace: ‘Well, you’re all boring and I’m fun.’
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