I am not an ideal friend… not even close to it. Over the years, I have become withdrawn and perhaps more comfortable in my own skin. I don’t exist to please people, but I don’t mean to necessarily offend them either. I spend most of my days alone… I work, I travel around, but the need to speak unnecessarily, as I see most people do, doesn’t tempt me. I don’t call people to just talk (this doesn’t include my mother as we have an unspoken pact of talking to each other every day and besides, she is my everything) and they have stopped doing the same.
Had it been one of the indicators or characteristics of a good partner, I would have been wearing a tiara and the love of my life is often a witness to that. He is almost astonished how my phone almost never rings and even if it does, I choose him. Of course it is not all that easy… now that I live in Delhi, I see how outdated and absurd/high-headed I sound… because here, even in a metro crowded to the brim, people can’t help scream loudly into their phones…
Coming back to the point, my Facebook List is a sham, as it is for each one of us. I can count my friends, the people I have a basic know-how of and genuinely respect, on my fingertips, or twice over. I am particularly reminded of an instance when around a year back, I was working in Ranchi and how one of my colleagues had made my life a living hell… she wanted to outdo me and never missed an opportunity to show me she is the boss… well, for starters, she wasn’t… I was meek for a while as I couldn’t decipher what was going on, such was the level of slyness, but when my self-esteem took a hit and the purpose of my being there became blurred, I began giving it back to her… Not surprisingly, she started warming up to me and one day, out of the blue, dropped those three dreaded words – “Amol, aren’t we friends?” With a mock-sarcastic look on my face, I couldn’t help reply with a counter-question, “Really, are we?” Needless to say, she was offended and turned a little pale. I wish I could make her understand (in a better way) that I had long ago stopped making friends just for the heck of it. Call it an ‘energy-saving’ tactic. And no, that doesn’t make me a snob. I can scratch my back. Period.
If a relationship isn’t adding anything to our life, except for mere blabbering, why be up for it. I am uncomfortable, when in the second ‘hello-hi’ meeting, people ask you with a painfully funny look, “So, how much do you earn?” or even worse, “Do you have a boyfriend?” and when they get a raised eyebrow for an answer, they are hurt. I can almost predict an occurrence of this kind now but there is no way I can spare them the embarrassment.
The truth is that the people I consider my friends (age no bar) are always in my thoughts and I, honestly, without a tinge of contrivance, jealousy, insecurity, wish the best for them. Even when I don’t remember their birthdays, their anniversaries, I remember the people that they are and the difference they have made in my life… how they have stood by me despite my aloofness. They are aware that I will never be a typical friend, but they know I have their back and that is how this river will bend.