The Friends List

The Friends List

         How many friends you have on facebook? A simple question from my daughter hit me. Six hundred and seventy three and growing was my reply. She shrugged, was blunt in saying it should by now have crossed one thousand since you have been in the teaching field for more than 19 years. True, but I know there is no effort from my side. I just accept the request and rarely send. Most are my students, so I prefer to wait for them to want me on the list rather than encroaching upon their space. I am content and happy about my list that interestingly does not have some of my closest friends for they are not on facebook and those who joined, are not active. Almost all are my students, they are my friends as well, and I am very much happy about it.

        My social networking ventures started with Orkut which I reluctantly joined. It was Vikas Jha who insisted that I should be there. My feeling was, it’s a space where students would be expressing freely, and my presence would either restrict their free space or make me uncomfortable. But he persisted, finally I was on Orkut, he posted first scrap. Soon many more joined. Then facebook came and Orkut became obsolete. My activity was limited to accepting friend requests, replying messages, rarely I updated my status but friends’ list swell with addition almost every day. The most pleasant part being I could connect with students who passed out more than six-seven years back and was totally cut off with them.

        I just find it hard not to compare with my college days. Then there were no cell phones, no emails, no social networking. Now it is really easy to connect to friend, update about status, send message not just to one but to many more at a time. The invention of new English, new words like ‘u’, ‘gr8’…. , less rules, it has become easy to communicate. The thrust is on what we want to convey, not on minute details. With fewer options we spent hours discussing, chatting whenever we met. After passing out the lethargy in writing letter killed many a relations. All classmates of engineering, college went in chosen directions, different, diverse and in this world with me at Chandrapur, almost little chance of crossing along, many friends remained only in memories.

  On the other side I kept myself with a small group in engineering. We enjoyed everything, ‘watching birds old and new’, gossip, discussion on all kinds of topics. Latest movies, political discussion which used to be fierce given our different but strong opinions and ideological inclinations, emotional sharing on heartbreak, ECG of others, optimistic glances on the ‘Latest….. and the …… oldest’, all this was part of friendship. There also were clash of egos, misunderstanding leading to cracks in friends. Some fortunately got sealed others remained without patch up. After passing out with not many easier options many failed to survive. In future if some are destined to cross surely a spark will be there to ignite but then that will be the test of relations. Whether it succeeds in igniting the passion will ultimately depend upon the unseen, dormant warmth left in between when all these years passed by.

      Nevertheless those survived the test of time matured a great deal and some new relations were built and are now part of enriched relational sphere. The social networking sites helped to get connected to students who are my friends on my facebook account. The big list is always a matter of pride and a kind of satisfaction but some very close relations sustained without these sites. It is now easy to make friends. You can easily get in regular touch, exchange mails, share emotions, update status, all help in building relations. Lucky…. we all.

        The friends list was on my mind. I was reading a story in the times of India (11/01/2012) of a girl from Nagpur. She failed in exams couple of times; she had an altercation with parents, a scene not very much new to her. That day it was little more  fierce. She immediately shared it with her close friend. She went her home. Stayed there, decided to come back home but her friend wanted her to stay at her home but she left. On her way she got a call from friend that her (friend’s) mother wanted to talk to her. She went back. She was consoled by mother and given a proposal to go to a place in other state with her for couple of days. She agreed and went. Her nightmare started, she was abused and an attempt was made to push her in flesh trade but the relentless efforts from her brother rescued her. In all these dirty designs her friend was an accomplice. She did not divulge any information to her brother rather kept culprits in loop about his efforts. A shocking story of a girl leaving home, that went horribly wrong. Her so called close friend betrayed her. How terribly she misread her intentions? How difficult it really is to read people? She confided with friend about her problems but the friend thrown her to wolves. How can she make friend like this? 

         My mind forced me  to revisit the idea of a friend. Who is a friend? Any difference between an acquaintance and a friend? Knowing.. dose it mean having a friendship? How will one define friendship? It simply cannot be defined. This disturbing story apart it is a wonderful relation that defies everything age, gender, caste, religion… the only condition, we must feel it, understand it, realize what it meant to be a friend. The more we feel, deeper we think, better we understand, the difficult we find to have a friend and become one, a true well wisher, with no open demands, no hidden interests, just pure sense of well being and selflessness. How to find such true friend? No one can, these are the relations that evolve over the time, mature through sharing, help and understanding. The most interesting thing about this undefined relation is if it exists between any two blood relations or family relations or professional relations or simply any two relations then those relations blossom. Father being a great friend of children…. And so on.

       The friendship is always based on mutual trust, a belief that he/she can understand me. A student of mine who is in regular touch with me, once  called, in the following discussion he referred to another student working in IT sector. Both are in regular contact, the common platform being love for debate. He just remarked that it has been days since they had any discussion. He did call the friend but did not get reply, not then and afterwards as well. He then directly questioned the intentions. He was hurt that there was no response from the friend and that he suspected that being intentional. He was doubtful of the friendship that was more than four years old, with all good, funny and wonderful experiences.

       I told him that this was the test of your friendship. If you have any doubt that the friend is acting like this with bad intent then you were never friends. You must have strong belief that the friend could not find time to talk to you or might have missed it inadvertently. As a friend you must have that much of faith. In friendship it is not important how many times you meet, how much you talk but a strong feel of bonding in spite of not meeting and talking. That belongingness, faith and mutual trust are basic elements of friendship. You suspect the intentions and allow misunderstanding to encroach, the friendship will decline leading to unfortunate demise. Just a call not returned can create rift then that is not friendship. Have faith, don’t fall prey to misunderstanding and kill the friendship. The test of time is this. If it survives situations like this then it will mature else it will get a decent burial for which you then will not be responsible. A small, unintentional response can induce distrust and we find friends parting ways.

      The problem is simple we are not ready to understand what this relationship expects. We don’t allow it to mature, we burden it with loads of expectations but actually it is never about expecting, it is always about believing, having faith. We expect, then suspect, conclude and finally pay the price by losing a friend. Becoming a friend and having one is not an easy task but then this also puts to question whether the social networking sites are trivializing this wonderful relation. We just go on adding friends, request for friendships, share status and what not. We make friends without any idea of possibility of the relations maturing to higher level. Is it that we are not really interested in serious friendship? Are these relations inherently casual with no possibility of blossoming?

       It definitely is a wrong way of looking at a great opportunity thrown by these sites. The difficulty is not with social networking but with our way of understanding friendship. We fail to understand the boundary conditions within which it must be allowed to mature. We fail to quell the slightest of provocations that come out of misunderstanding. I feel fortunate that some of my students are very good friends of mine. I am glad that we collectively maintained the limits of student- teacher relationship and succeeded in maturing the friendship. I must admit with great pleasure that facebook has thrown many possibilities of some relations developing in to friendship. The social networking sites provide us a chance to remain in contact, share, exchange but without learning to become a friend and have one, it is just an acquaintance not friendship.

If only we value and mature as a friend the friends list is of significance else har ek friend jaroori hota hai is just a hollow advertisement.       

  

 

We The People

We The People

      As human we cannot escape the trauma of death of beloved ones leaving us naturally but when parents lose young son the pain is unbearable. The untimely death when it comes on an alien land the agony multiplies, worse when it is due to no fault of his, no words can express the pain. The family of Anuj Bidve is going through what no parents should go, loss of young son. Anuj was shot through head by unidentified assailants, the motive still not known. The most unfortunate part the news reached to the parents through facebook. The life of Bidve family was filled with sorrow, the loss was irreparable.

  The Manchester police contacted the family, expressed deep regret, updated them about the investigation status. The team of police officers came to India, met the bereaved family, expressed condolences. The team took the parents to U.K. They visited the spot of crime. They also met the leaders of U.K. requesting them to look after the safety of the young Indians. The leaders also shared their concerns, assured them of safety. It took 11 days to take the remains of Anuj to India. What a painful journey they had been through. Hats off to them they maintained decorum, kept the sorrow to themselves, no public display of mourning, held nobody responsible for this, demanded justice, remained private as much as they could.

     The British police earned respect of all those Indians who understand what it means to come all the way to India to meet the family of victim. They even apologized to the family for not being able to inform them about the incident immediately. Difficult to believe in a country where systemic apathy is taken for granted. Heard of policemen harassing the victims but expressing grief, apologizing for the crime that suddenly stopped the journey that otherwise would have been fascinating, full of energy, happiness, is difficult to imagine.

      Just have a look at how we responded to the incident. An article in Loksatta, a Marathi daily with comments appreciating the family and police of U.K. and sharing the grief, a similar report on a Marathi news channel, many friends, relatives gave support but overall in Maharashtra we witnessed a killing silence, the reason may be that things like this in Indian context are not new. Our system indeed has failed to appreciate the family that behaved with great restrain, maintained composure. We were not able to put a front beyond Pune in support of the Bidve family, nevertheless the internet community did contribute but it is a fraction compared to our huge society. The people of U.K. did their best to express condolences, they got united in support of the family, we failed less as a society,more as a system.

   Our leaders who are always emotionally charged up when addressing the constituency that votes them. When they stand to deliver an emotional speech, to raise the sentiments, to flare up the mob, they are best actors but no one could spare some time to visit the bereaved family. All are busy in the political strategies but social responsibility is never on the agenda. Look at the way the Bidve family maintained silence on the apathy of our leaders, they could have easily used media to target the political class but no they accepted it as their fate. What Manchester police did all the way coming from UK our system could not do it from few kilometers. Neither in this case nor in other cases similar to this, our police don’t show such solidarity as the system is built like this. As for our political class they respond only when they sense the possibility of their votes being affected.

      The evolution of society into a culture if at all has any parameter to judge then it is, how the society reacts to incidents like these. As it seems we have a lot of distance to cover. Our reactions in situations like these are more often individual. We share grief personally, we feel connected from thousand kilometers without even meeting. But our collective stand as a society depends often on our identity which we want ourselves to be linked to and not on tragedies like this.

  As a matter of fact unless we have war it’s really hard to unite us. Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar do unite us. This kind of unity is good, certainly necessary but for building national culture and developing social responsibility it is of little use, the reasons  can be attributed to its provisional nature. It is obvious that we are easily united as interest group based on caste, religion, language so much so that it is really easy to instigate us to resort to extreme measures. The mobs united on streets in the name of divisive ideologies, all fired up to protect the pride of a sect, don’t gather and work together for the non political social cause like this. We become so used to uniting on divisive agenda that we find it hard to get on agendas that are inherently social from which it’s difficult to draw political mileage. We see visits of leaders to slums, to the families of farmers but those don’t reflect in policies that would prevent occurrences of situations like this.

      In our country as big as this, tragedy is a norm rather than exception, but still the indifference of system cannot be in the interest of our evolution as a responsible society. In the event of crisis the response of a society is an index to its maturity. Our country has always been driven by the icons, lead by kings. We tend to seek emotional attachments at the top, ensconced there a king, a queen or a leader. We have rich tradition of individual greats but as a team we have often failed. Apart from the exceptions thrown by our army, the examples collective efforts, of team led by great men and equally committed members transcending human barriers and pushing the line of excellence farther are rare.          

     Those who are at the top love to ride on the waves of sentiments. In that sense also we usually fail to rise collectively as a society and system. Our individual reaction is undoubtedly compassionate but we find it really hard to put up shared platform where the sense of being one as a society, as a nation and also an urge to be part of the family as a society is expressed. A thousand people deeply sensitive, we can sense, but sharing a platform, we don’t see, for there is no platform. It doesn’t mean that all of us should flock around the family but there can be various ways in which the stage can be built without waiting for the establishment to work in this direction. That other than facebook there is no tangible effort, it is not a fault but this signifies where we stand as a society.

       This incident leaves many questions unanswered. Is it really feasible to have something of this kind in a country as big and as diverse as ours? With tragedies occurring at phenomenal rate can the system be expected to be sensitive to victims? Is the population the reason behind societal apathy? If so why our response to political, divisive agenda is fast, furious and pervasive? Is it really impossible for the leaders to share the grief? Is it so that it has nothing to do with our evolution as a culture? Is it that the UK police behavior is prompted by the sense of pride they always seek in being country of gentlemen? Why they approached to this case differently whereas our response was different? When a foreigner is being victimized we tend to get in to the protectionist mode than seek justice to victim? Is it that insensitivity of our system is closely linked to how society responds?

   The Bidve family has shown us the way one should maintain composure in this unbearable pain. The U.K. police has shown how a system should respond sympathetically, the leaders of U.K. whom the family met shown us how to express the solidarity and address to concerns and above all the family has shown how to make a common cause out of worst kind of tragedy by raising apprehensions about the safety of immigrants living in U.K. and request for their safety. No words can lessen burden of grief of Bidve family but if we mature as a society, our system gets sensitized to the sufferings of families of victims, we will be able to pay true tribute to Anuj.