Friends for life! Gimme a break!

ANI / Jul 28, 2009, 08:00 IST

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Most friendships these days do not last more than five years. A recent survey has revealed that people below 30 are unable to maintain friendships for more than 5 years.

Lee Iacocca��s sage observation, ��My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, you've had a great life��, would probably be dismissed by today��s generation as being out-of-sync with current realities.
A recent survey has revealed that people below 30 are unable to maintain friendships for more than 5 years. The coming-of-age, hip ��Dil Chahta Hai�� too showed the twenty-something Akash, Sid and Sameer drifting apart once Akash moved to Australia to run his father��s business empire and the carefree, gullible Sameer settled down to a staid computer business.
The survey cited ��shifting house, changing jobs and new romances�� as the ��top three reasons why friends lose touch.��
Didn��t the decade long, hugely popular sitcom, ��Friends��, wind up because Monica and Chandler decided to move to a suburb? The final episode, was quite heart-wrenching for any ��Friends�� fan, for the underlying assumption was that once Monica and Chandler left their New York apartment, things would never really ever be the same for the six friends.

They definitely would not be able to barge into the couple��s swanky new house, every single evening and at best would probably meet on occasional weekends. That they had a guest room demarcated for Joey also implied that now that Ross and Rachael was a couple and Phoebe was married, it was only Joey who would crash in at the Monica-Chandler residence. Uncannily, most of the survey respondents said that moving house and marriage were the prime friendship spoilers.

S Bhattacharya and T Shivpuri met in Lahore while doing their BT (a training course for graduate teachers) in 1935. S Bhattacharya recalls how bitterly cold it had been that December, when she tried to force herself to sleep but her chattering teeth kept her awake.
She didn��t have the money to buy a quilt and tried her best to keep herself warm by curling up under her thin bed sheet. Just as she was wondering how on earth she would live through the night without freezing to death, a fair and pretty girl walked in and draped a warm ��razai�� over her. They had been classmates, but had never exchanged a single word before, because, as S Bhattacharya reminisces fondly, she found Shivpuri snooty. ��I used to think she must be proud because she was so pretty and looked like she came from an affluent family.��
Bhattacharya and Shivpuri became the best of friends, and their friendship lasted a lifetime, literally. Even after marriage, and children, the two would visit each other and spend holidays together. Bhattacharya smiles nostalgically as she remembers how her husband, then a major in the army, had felt hurt because she had gone out for a movie, with Shivpuri, taking her son and Shivpuri��s eldest daughter along.
��He thought I enjoyed the ride in Shivpuri��s fancy car...I forget what car it was. At that time we had a small two-seater car. He thought it mattered to me what car I traveled in...!��
Bhattacharya and Shivpuri��s children grew up knowing their mothers were best of friends. Though they met infrequently, once every alternate year, which later tapered down to a visit every five years or so, the two friends were prolific letter writers. Each knew exactly what the other had been doing, how the children were faring in school, and how the husbands�� were coping with resentful superiors and tough market conditions.
When Bhattacharya lost her husband in 1988, Shivpuri came down and spent a month with her. They were meeting after more than a decade. They were now grandmothers and their grand daughters were as old as the two friends had been when they had first met.
Over the next decade, the two would continue writing to each other, though Bhattacharya��s letters became single page missives, because she now needed a magnifying glass to read what she was writing. Finally, after 70 years of sharing joyous milestones and heartbreaking disappointments and losses, Shivpuri passed away in 2005.
In a summer of 1970, four friends got together to build a tree-house that would be their haven away from controlling adults. They promise themselves that they would return, anytime they needed each other. Twenty years later they return to fulfill that promise. Starring Rosie O'Donnell, Melanie Griffith, Demi Moore, and Rita Wilson, ��Then and Now�� was Hollywood��s definitive ode to female bonding.
Bollywood of course has gone overboard with its friendship themes. From ��Dosti��, to ��Sholay��, to ��Rang De Basanti��, friends in the Bollywood scheme of things have been for life, and have at times been willing to give up their lives for each other.
Sometimes lifelong friendships have been embittered by a common love interest, as with the Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, Vyajayanthimala classic, ��Sangam��. Its ��dost dost na raha�� has entered the lexicon of all disillusioned friends. Nonetheless, Hindi films had no place for a disloyal friend.
Thus Rajendra Kumar shot himself, rather than have his friend��s marriage destroyed. Amitabh Bachchan too had to die, to allow his lady love, Rakhi and his best friend, Vinod Khanna, to live happily ever after.
Going by Hollywood standards, it would seem in India, friendships are indeed forever. But if one takes a look at the lives of our dream merchants, very few of them re-enact their reel lives in real life.
At one time Kareena Kapoor and Esha Deol had been bumchums. Then, as rumours say, Kareena said something impolite about Esha��s parents, and that was the end of a budding friendship.
Currently, Bollywood��s firmest (and most talked about) friendship is between Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. As everyone has read and heard the director-producer pronounce several times, Karan Johar has vowed that every movie of his will have the ��country��s best actor�� in it.
One blushes to think where that leaves Naseeruddin Shah or the very versatile, immensely charismatic mega super-star, Mr Bachchan! Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan��s friendship has weathered ten long years and luckily for both of them, their association has been mutually beneficial.
All the movies they have done together have been superhits (including ��Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge�� in which Karan Johar had assisted Aditya Chopra). The other Shah Rukh loyalist is Farah Khan who too swears by her mentor��s steadfastness as a true friend.
But a friendship that has truly stood the test of time is that between yesteryears�� leading screen goddess Asha Parekh and her girl brigade. Asha Parekh, Shammi (the character actress) and Nanda meet often and chit-chat about the golden days. The fast-friends rescued Nanda from depression after her fianc��, Manmohan Desai (the director responsible for some of Amitabh Bachchan��s biggest potboilers like ��Amar Akbar Antony��) committed suicide.
But such genuine, lifelong friendships are a rarity in Bollywood. Aamir Khan is very much a loner, quite the obverse of his DJ persona in ��Rang De Basanti��.
Saif Ali is busy with Rosa and does not have time to devote to anyone like an Akash or a Sameer from ��Dil Chahta Hai��. Incidentally, has anyone ever heard the Big B talk affectionately of a close friend from his thirty-odd years of association with the film industry?
He is always diplomatic, but other than Amar Singh, who is from outside the film fraternity, he has never publicly acknowledged his deep regard or friendship for anyone else. He entered politics because of his childhood friendship with Rajiv Gandhi. Now of course the two families are not even on talking terms, with the ��Shahenshah�� of India saying what could they, the ��praja�� do when the ��raja�� decided to turn a could shoulder towards them.
S Sawhney (name changed) is an ambitious young business executive at a multinational logistics provider and says that she does not even expect her colleagues to remain friends with her once she switches jobs. Quite pragmatically she says school was the last time she had had genuine friends.
While doing her management degree, petty rivalry and insecurities turned friends into foes. Though she has made some good friends at work with whom she has lunch every day, she knows that an out-of-turn promotion can turn the friendship sour.
She is in touch with a close friend from school, but they aren��t ��bosom buddies�� any longer. The truth is she doesn��t miss not having a close friend because she has a boyfriend with whom she shares all her anxieties and joys.
S Sarkar and N Chatterjee had been inseparable from the age of four. When Chatterjee��s girlfriend left him, he was on the verge of committing suicide. It was Sarkar who shook him out of his morbid despondency and brought him back to normalcy. Sarkar��s mother says she treated Chatterjee like her second son.
And yet, the two have not spoken, nor met for six year now. Surprisingly, it is not because they have quarreled. It��s just that they have got busy with their individual lives. Just as ��till death do us part�� wedding vows have turned into an antiquated ritual, the happy adage, ��friends for life�� is fast fading into oblivion.

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