Remember that famous dialogue from 'Maine pyaar kiya' - "Ek ladka aur ladki kabhi dost nahin ho sakte". I had found it cheesy, very cheesy that time, when I was 10 or something. And for some strange reason, it stuck in my head ever since. Actually, honest confession, quite a few dialogues from that movie stuck in my head, I must embarrassingly admit. Anyway, more on that later. I must not digress.
I studied in a co-ed school where the ratio of boys and girls was I think 3:1. All through school, my best friends have been boys. In college too, we were a group of 2 girls and 3 boys. At my first job, it was 1 me and 4 boys that were my Bandra family. In Chennai, in Bangalore, I have ALWAYS been one of the boys and hence always had boys as best friends.
I think it kind of traces back to my childhood, when we were a joint family with 4 boys and 2 girls under 1 roof. While Didi was the quintessential coy girl, I was the one playing marbles with bhaiya on the roads, I was the one climbing trees, jumping on cars, barging into other people's houses on holi with pichkaris and 'gubbaras'. My mom always tells me that I was meant to be a boy but God got distracted and accidentally made a girl out of me.
Of course that does not mean I do not do justice to being a girl. I think I am as "girly" as it gets, but the fact is that I love making friends with boys. I always have. Like a lot of 'my kinda girls', I have grown up having more boys for friends than girls and it is something I had taken for granted, until now.
Suddenly all these boys got married and really became animals from another planet. I love the concept of marriage and I am very happy for them. I have danced in a lot of their weddings and wished them all well but thing with marriage is that it makes these boys suddenly responsible. Something that hit me suddenly and something I wasn't used to. Its somewhat the same when girls get married too but some how girlfriends always find time and space for girlfriends. These boys really turn a new leaf. Actually not a new leaf, they just turn a different leaf when it comes to girls they are friends with. These boys remain thick with boy friends and they continue hitting on any and every PYT that comes their way. But when it comes to girls they have been good friends with, I don't think they know what to do with them anymore. Clearly the girls are not boys so they cannot make their spouses understand that they are doing a boy's night out with the girls. Girl-friends obviously are no good to hit on so that anyway takes away any iota of effort they would have otherwise made. It really leaves us 'girl-friends' in a very precarious situation.
So what does one do? Foolish ones like me believe they can make new friends. That's the thing with men who have been married for over 5 years at least. By then, I am guessing they are open to making friends again, assuming their marriage is blissful and their children are their bundles of joy. Or some such. I always thought it was just the newly married lot that is so badly behaved with their girl-friends.
In the last couple of years therefore, I have tried making friends out of a few people that I have met and connected fairly well with. I meet a lot of people. All the time. Through my job and because I love meeting people. Its not difficult for me to strike a conversation. By the way, mind you, I am not saying I can hold discussions. I don't think I can - I don't have enough wordly wisdom or knowledge but I can spring conversations and flit from one to the other very easily. And because I have always been one of the boys, because it doesn't strike me that boys have now become men, because I still look forward to making lasting friendships, I have been somewhat hopeful and optimistic about being able to make new friends, sometimes.
And this is where the damn movie dialogue comes rushing back and proves itself true. I am stunned with the realization that truly a man and a woman cannot be friends any more. Invariably there is some higher order agenda that becomes apparent almost immediately. Well thank god for that, that its apparent sooner than later, but still, its a bit annoying.
There are times when I have met someone, had a fantastic conversation, have looked forward to more such conversations. Looked forward to just being able to be "me" in that esteemed company. To be able to say what I want, be free spirited as I once was with my boys, to watch movies, go out for lunch, just hang out, stuff like that, with absolutely NO other motive but to enjoy the other person's company and because we connect, which in itself is such a rarity. But no, it is impossible to have a single such association. It always gets complicated, one way or the other. Either the man gets ideas or the girl starts to fall in love or people make a big deal out of it. MAN! it just gets complicated and unnatural and diluted and that is so sad.
As boys turn into men and girls into women, why does purity of intention go out of the window? Why does everything become so agenda driven? Why do people lose "touch" with people-ness? Why do we forget that friendship is still the most precious and cherish-able relationship because it is supposed to be true, pure and a mirror to life. Do we get so jaded and cynical that we stop valuing it? Whatever it is, it makes Sooraj Bharjatiya damn bloody right.
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These are Facts of lIfe , u just cant beat .Accept this as a change and live on thats the only choice you have , we all have been thru the same thing - of loosing friends or let me put it this way friends disappearing the minute u get married .... nothing can be done about it ... blame it on the nature way of growth in life . Abhi toh u wait and watch how u get despo to find soemone to talk to ,to share with etc etc - as a girl u still may have your school chaddi buddies but men have to sacrifice them as they grow older - but the flip side is that u find newer ones to fill gaps .
ReplyDeleteI agree with the second half of your Blog - agenda driven .... this is controllable by you and you can change it ... if u hve the right people around you .... get married open newer avenues and then go back to your friends ... they come back ..changed , im saying this out of experience ..
not everyone is agenda driven but then we are talking thumb rules not exceptions....i think as a kid the most precious thing one has is innocence and as one grows up whoosh out of the window goes innocence and in come the oh so coveted worldly wisdom and with it agendas. There was a time when u did thing and the reason was JUST and now u do things with the format of what next flow charts (may or may not accept it but denial doesnt change things)...i guess most people men/ women fall for the trap...n thts wht the world calls growing up...which i personally feel sucks!! everyone changes...wht u miss the most is wht u notice the most..
ReplyDeleteits really tough,for a boy to strike up an amazing visually satisfying conversation which needs to end cause the last one he pursued went deeper and made a man out him.However it stands true for the girls as well and that's when the word prioritisation gets misused constantly and the charm of having a JUST a conversation is lost.that said change is constant and emotional stability of us womenfolk makes us better on the speed dial than men.
ReplyDeletemaybe the gaps filled by newer people you have met or will meet would become stronger faster as you have changed as well.
Lady A.. Nice Read!.. its the bitter truth but each to his/her own.. co-incidently read this link today.. check http://realbeauty.yahoo.com/ramya-pandyan-article/post/dove_ramya/42/the-best-kind-of-guy-friend.html ..
ReplyDeleteHope that adds into your addition :).. Tk Cr
Sid - Thank you for reading my post and thank you even more for sharing the link of the really interesting note. But tell me, do such men really exist? Actually, who am I asking - you are one such friend my dear Ice Man :)
ReplyDelete@ Tiger/ Anonymous 1 and Anonymous 2 - yes, that is what life is all about, what to do. Though I'm not necessarily talking about losing friends as much as that fact that growing up complicates a perfectly normal relationship between a girl and a boy and that sucks. Since I am bound to take sides of my own gender, I will blame the men for ALWAYS having an agenda. They just never want to make genuine friends with a girl, they are just not capable of doing so.
ReplyDeleteTo men, women are either always available, easy, or bitches. Never just a "good friend I care about and like for who she is". Of course, IF there ever was a man who approached us women for genuine pure friendship, chances are we would not give him a chance. Blame it on the Wolf story.
By the way, my dear Anonymous friends - it might be nice to know you. Lets start with your names, shall we?
Dear Miss Apeksha,
ReplyDeleteThis is so well written. It seems as if we have been flowing in the same stream of thoughts with different genders. I have been through similar changes in my relations with my friends, I agree that after getting married your equations with your friend change drastically in both genders though. As one by one all my friends got married I noticed that they were disappearing from our circle and had a completely different life. Forget about the female friends but I miss the quality time I spent with my male friends as well. Being so busy sitting at a Katta doing nothing at all, watching even the worst of the movies and enjoying them as well, going out for parties and being the cynosure, trekking to the most boring places and making them interesting wouldn’t have been possible without friends. I wonder why can’t their respective spouses come along and be a part of the circle and enjoy life, why can’t men realise that friends of their wives are as important as their own friends. And when I was almost on the verge of accepting that “ A man and a woman can’t be just friends”, I met this sunshine, wife of my best friend who came as a package offer “Ek pe ek free” and soon became my bestie. This makes me believe that there are people in this world who can carry the bandwagon of friendship without gender bias, you just need to meet the right ones.