Thursday, November 10, 2011

Friendship the old way


I did a very strange thing today. I posted a message to a friend of mine, on his wall. He will never read it. He had died on the Diwali day.
And after I had joined a group of his friends, in the virtual world, to pen a condolence message, in the only place I could, on his facebook page, knowing fully well that it will probably, never be read by any of his family members, I felt very uneasy. It made me shiver
We had stayed in the same city, worked in the same company, spoke the same language, ate the same food, yet hardly found time to meet or speak to each other. Today he is more.
There was a time, not very long ago, when a telephone at home was a luxury for many. Yet we used to queue up at the nearest STD booth to make a call or book a trunk call to speak to our near and dear ones, at prohibit cost.
Today when it is so easy to make a call, when almost every member of a family has one or more phones, we hardly talk to family and friends. We don’t write letters but sent out short messages which do not reflect any of our emotions. On rare occasions when friends come together, everybody spent more time on their phones than talking to each other. Two college students, sitting next to each other in a bus seat, do not talk to each other but communicate through sms. So, has technology brought us closer or driven us further apart?!
In this fast urban lifestyle and in this mad scramble for success and money we have lost many of the small joys of our lives. The meeting of friends, the long hours of adda, the laughter, the joy of eating together, being part of each other’s joys and sorrows…..are only dreams today.
But, however much the world may change, however we may progress, nothing can substitute for the joy of seeing our loved ones. The warmth of that hug, the tinkle of their laughter. The comfort of knowledge that there is always someone to wipes your tears and lend a caring shoulder to rest on.
So, everytime you think of sending a sms to a friend or write a facebook post, spare a thought. Pickup the phone and speak to him /her, or better still drop in and give him / her a hug; because you never know, it could be the last time you would be doing that.

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