‘Har ek friend jaroori hota hai’

The latest ‘Airtel’ commercial makes for interesting reading n the context of what friendships mean in today’s day and age.

Al though on the face of it, it’s about celebrating different kinds of friendships, (shopping, joke buddy,classroom friends, bike-ride friends); there is a need to probe if ‘friendship’ itself is undergoing a change.

In today’s urban, nuclear, isolated lives, friends have become important than ever before. And however cliched it may sound. ‘Friends are the new family’ holds true amongst the urban youth.
Social media, mobile phones and BBM’s have further perpetuated the friendship phenomenon. It gives you the impression that one is constantly surrounded by them and one’s lives are being led within thathalo.
The communication, gives you a peek into the lives of the GENX world - the extended youth phase,the carefree life matched by unbridled consumption. Yet the superficiality & transactional nature of the relationship depicted cannot be ignored.

Shopping mallwala shopping friend

Koi exam hallwala copying friend

Articulating friendship in terms of need states itself is a large indicator of the nature of relationships becoming transactional. Friendship being measured on the merits of the others performance/usefulness in the transaction.

On the other hand, it could well be argued that it is a more realistic depiction of contemporary life.Instead of singing paeans of the holier-than-thou-virtues of friendship, acknowledging the fact that to navigate through life, one needs people with different skills and virtues.

Koi Effortless, Koi Forced Hota Hai
Lekin Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota hai

The fact that people have different personalities and come with distinct traits… And even though certain traits personally don’t appeal to you, they add a certain texture and variety while enriching your life either directly or indirectly.

And this is where ‘jaroori’ enters the vocabulary.
Indicative of a larger societal trend where what you are desiring is not friendship but connectedness & networking under the garb of friendship. The implied assumption that having similar tastes and preferences are secondary to one’s practical usefulness. Notice the friend suggestion box in Networking sites. Every new social contact is termed as a ‘friend’.

Friends are being assessed for what they bring to the table. While choosing friends, a quick mental SWOT analysis of the other person happens before you befriend him. Storing number in phonebook/facebook along with a bday reminder so as to wish them on the due date fulfils the responsibility of ’being in touch’.
Indicative of our changing priorities while adapting to the demands of the networked economy

From the days of:

ye dosti hum nahin todenge,
todenge dam magar teraa saath naa chhodenge

When friendships were meant to last a lifetime...The idea that u stick through thick and thin, share each other’s success/failures while taking into account each other’s differences /idiosyncrasies.
We have come a long way.

But the thought itself is not so alien to us. Even during the earlier times, what helped one move up the social ladder was in politically correct terms referred to as ‘Contacts’. The number of people one had access to was directly proportional to ones growth in the social hierarchy esp. in the pre-liberalization
era .However it was Contacts and not friends.

However in today’s interconnected and highly interdependent world, the idea of contacts is losing relevance because the lines between the two have blurred. In a majority of the cases the contact reveals a lot of personal details (courtesy-social media) so as to be classified as friend. In fact today, friendship
has a social currency attached to it with its own bragging rights (be it number of friends, celebrities/hotchicks on your friends list) and contacts/acquaintance play a major role here.

No wonder,’ Har ek friend jaroori hota hai’ has managed to captures the imagination of today’s youth.