Time for Love & Intimate Bonds

That Magic Flash of Discovery that we've discovered A True Friend-Time. 

Where is it all gone?


I don't seem to find traces of any of it all?  Here I am feeling I’m on a crazy roller-coaster ride whizzing with its swoops and panic ridden thrills - and a formidable to do list extending into the near and far future. Mundane and ambitious. The to do list reeling under it all.

Today here I am, doing what I wanted to. 
People say I’ve got it all- success with its attendant props and paraphernalia.  An accomplished wish list   (almost).         
And ‘friends’!!!

I know so many ‘right’ people. 
I air kiss so many 'famed' people over the evening filled with ‘parties’ who become instant ‘friends’ ,


 I must ‘must meet up’ with them, 


“it's been so nice talking to you”, 


“let's get together”. “Sure sure over this weekend.” Sounds like a dream world?

A recent work interaction brought me into contact with a street-smart twerp who I found made every friend with an agenda. His life is about periphery-ing around the celebrated and ‘rich’ and “influential” and the “arrived”. “I want to be in the papers.” “The sum of who you are is a function of whom you are ‘friends’ with",  he blatantly informs as he scurries on his merry go round agenda to meet a restaurant tycoon dropping names as easily as the crumbs  he dropped on his shirt from his hors d'oeuvres. AGENDA writ large on his face!!!

 One needn’t be horrified. 
He verbalized it, but it is a sign of the times we live in, I think in a greater or lesser degree. He is a third degree case, but the malaise exists in lesser degrees, trust me!

It sometimes seems a world where no one cares about anybody.  Cynical? I hope so!

Traveling   along the work and success way did I stop to take time out and nurture those friendships that I came across along the way? The people I so enjoyed and care for. I’m wondering somewhere along the line the definition of friendship seems to have changed. Wasn’t it about caring and sharing and enjoying the company? For the sake of those moments? 
For the sake of the friendship?
Friendship for Frendships sake?

I don't think I’m alone in feeling that these aspects, in that the concept is wearing thin. 

Mr Wordsworth you should be living in our times, you’d certainly have cause to lament 'what is this life if full of care. No time, no space, no emotional accommodation, no encumbrances. It seems that that's what husbands, wife’s, children or parents or just sepia album extend joint families have become. 


-There are DINKS who just cannot accommodate a baby in their world. They have to get ahead, where would they fit in a baby. And many a career woman has even dispensed with the need for a spouse. Her work, career and self, self, self is of utmost importance. Her social drive cannot be impeded. Companionship? Not in the dictionary. Divorces growing-ly fill reams in courts.


Friendship is not getting extinct to be sure, (that would be an apocalypse of another type). 

Sociologists are putting it in as a fading concept of relationships. 


Is it becoming so that you need a ‘how to’ manual to get into a thing that used to be so natural that even babies knew it without being taught. 

You went into kindergarten and sat next to a girl. She peeked into lunchbox and you bopped her on the head with your aluminum bag and became friends for ever after. 

So what ails friendship in these times? 


Things seem askew when the times are such that every sentence is followed with a 


‘do you think you could get me a discount in ...........”, or 
‘is it possible if you could loan me................” or 
"you are so well connected could I be introduced to............", or 
"may I trouble you with a membership to..........", and recently a priceless one was "my husband would really get ahead if you could get him introduced to..........."!!!

Agenda agenda agenda!!!


The relationship of friendship inherent to living itself is receiving debilitating blows from so many quarters. Most of all from the growing mushroom cloud of commerce and material explosions.

It’s time to reckon investments of a more enriching sort. 


Weren’t social evenings meant to be bonding times of shared enjoyment? 


The basics seem submerged beneath the display of splendor and stilted bonhomie. I want to get real, we all do, and we all know we want caring & sharing & genuine hugs minus the plastic ‘mwahs’? 


Why have 'values' trans-morphed to literal semantics as in value meaning material index? It’s all about getting back into making time!

For the many lovely people I've met on the way to here in my life that I've been hoarding in my 'love to hang out with’ list. I didn’t realize so much time has elapsed since and some precious friendships are even lost in the mists of the time elapsed. I'm remembering best friend times from long ago. Our guffaws over the pimply nerd boys from the school nearby, or the oil- laden Hindi tutor, who possibly learn t more English than I did Hindi.

Life is not meant to be such a serious 'business' I'm sure. 


In fact, one step further, if we exclude people on an emotional quotient, except at a functional level, we are being irreligious. 




Religion teaches interdependence , love thy neighbor, family and all such caring that takes one out of the 'selfish, brutish and short life' that existence is otherwise.

Pictures here are all of people I have liked or cared for or are friends or people I have affection for.


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Nisha JamVwal









As appeared in my Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle Weekly Relationship 

Nisha JamVwal nishajamvwal@gmail.com

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Column by Nisha JamVwal