Yet another friendship day that Hallmark invented and keeps on popularizing has come. Well, I am not planning to send any greeting card to any friend, but would like to take this moment to remember my friends and thank them for the friendship.
They say you can only rely on your childhood friends. And the friends you make in the virtual world cannot be trusted. From my personal experience, it is not always true. There were many moments in my life when I used to be let down hugely by some of my childhood friends who valued money and social status more. Forgive and forget policy works and the friendship still goes on. But there were some genuine and sincere childhood friendships which continue to this date. And I have realized that the number of days or years of friendship does not really count in a good friendship.What matters is how much your friend cares for and supports you.
Friends in need are friends indeed, as the saying goes. But it’s not only them who have become my best friends. There are many others who would just brighten up the moments I sit with and talk to them. With whom I can share my happy and sad moments. From both the real and virtual world. But then there are some that needs a special mention because they were involved in some special or most needed hours of my life.
A friend, who always remained in the backstage and never took credit for what she did, had helped me so much with M-Pod, my Malayalam podcast. She took me along to many events, introduced me to people, various forms of art and activism and in the process I learned a lot. At the early stages of adulthood, when I was emotionally unstable – because I was still learning what life and relationships were and couldn’t take it myself when people I loved hurt me – she was the shoulder to cry on.
There were not many tools available in the initial days of music blogging and the only option was Audioblogger (now known as Hipcast), an embeddable music player that also hosts MP3 files. I tried it on a trial mode and got some appreciation for my songs. I was about to quit after the trial period and that was when this man, who was just an online friend then, came up and gifted me a 2-yrs subscription. He only requested (not even demanded) that I should keep singing. You have to understand that it happened at a time (which remains un-changed even today) when people wouldn’t pay even to hear their favorite or famous/popular singers. And he paid $ to hear my songs which I recorded using my poor quality chat microphone. We remain good friends.
When I wanted to fight a legal case and sought help, there was this other friend who is a corporate lawyer and she offered all the legal help. For free. She kept following up even among her busy schedules and made sure everything worked fine throughout the process. And once when my own ignorance put me in a bad position, her words gave me much comfort.
There is another friend who once helped me connect with his friend to get me a job interview, at a time I needed a job so badly. I was in the middle of nowhere and had just quit from a job after just a single working day because the work schedule there was frustrating. This friend, who mesmerizes people with his music, helped me at the need of the hour.
When my Mom needed to have an angioplasty done, it had to be decided and acted upon quickly after the angiogram. I had to arrange the money overnight because the hospital administrator said that I would have to pay Rs. 1.12 lakhs upfront for the stent. I was short of 75 grands even after pooling up the money I had saved. Though I would get this 75k in a week’s time I still needed the money for the moment. Then I called up a friend and asked for help. He said – “I have saved 5 lakhs for my wedding which is in the next 3 months. Just tell me how much you want and I will transfer to your bank account“. This is a friend whom I’d known only for 3-4 years but became close friends. Nobody else, even the wealthy ones in the family, could give me such a comforting assurance.
Then there are others who tried (and who keep trying) to see me reach a place in the music industry. Like a researcher in a university in the UK who kept pestering his friends in the music industry to give me a break. Another one, a doctor from UK who gave me a chance to showcase my music in one of his projects. A playback singer’s mother, who gave me valuable suggestions and called me to catch a flight and go to Chennai to participate in Airtel Super Singer (and I couldn’t go because there was a function in the family).
Any relationship without love and care is meaningless. People say that family is important and that they are the ones who would stand for you when you need help. I agree, but most of the times it is the obligation of ‘blood-relation’ that makes the family stand close, not the love itself. Whereas in friendship (and in love, in some cases, until it takes the customary form of commitment), there is no such obligation. There, the love is pure and selfless. And that’s what makes the world go round. That is why friendship and friends are so important in our lives.
So thank you everyone, all my best friends, good friends, casual friends and acquaintances, for the love and support. And those who only saw me as a tool, an object, a funny-figure or a feel-good thing, I never gave a damn about you. Not that I am a perfect person or have not been a jerk at times though.