Best Friend

During last year Christmas time frame, out of blue, someone suddenly out of context, popped up a question and asked me, "Who is your Best Friend?". I was speechless. I couldn't answer. I genuinely parsed through almost all my friends in my head but couldn't pick any one as my best friend. I was aghast. The one who asked question was surprised and laughed that I don't have an answer! That moment, that conversation passed by, but the question kept running in my head somewhere in background for so many days seeking for an answer. The reason for not figuring out the answer is my lack of understanding of question. So I spent several hours analyzing who is a friend. And then lets figure out, who is best among them.

To define, who is a friend, there is no simple definition. There are several definitions. Also friend, is mutual thing and there are various kinds of friends viz school friend, college friend, friend in neighborhood, friend at office etc and these days, new kind called facebook friends also has evolved.

According to my understanding, I would like to define friend or the ingredients/stages associated to a friend in somewhat in this fashion. At the very fundamentalism, a friend is someone who recognizes you. If a person doesn't even recognize you, then he cannot be considered as a friend. Next obvious thing is that you both need to talk. Without talking, there cannot be friendship. Once you start talking, then comes the sharing, understanding etc. After this, there will be wishing good for each other since you now share information and understand each other. Post this comes the crucial ingredient, which is caring. It is significant part of any major friendship. Finally, at its peak, you both start encouraging, criticizing, laugh, cry, hate, obsess, fight, patch-up etc.

As you can see, there are several stages of friendship in a friend. Few friends are just at stage 1 where you both just recognize each other while few friends might be at stage 3 of sharing, understanding etc. A so called friend can be at a different stage of friendship. There are again sub-stages in these friendships, like what kind of information do you share with each other and what you don't share. Do you only talk about happy and good news or also share bad/sad news. As I said, its very complicated.

To put it simple, there will be wall with each of our friends. Depending upon the stage and sub-stage, the thickness of wall varies. Stage 1 will have thickest wall and as one moves to the next stage, the thickness reduces. It is hard to find a friend without any walls. A bonafide friend with absolutely invisible wall is your self consciousness.

Now coming back to the question, best friend should be one who has a wall which is as thin as possible. i.e., with whom you can share everything and anything, who understands every aspects of you, criticize when wrong, always wishes best for you, remembers, respects you. After  analyzing so much about best friend, i still couldn't figure out who is my best friend.

The reason for still not figuring out best friend is probably because there is no one. For example, consider just sharing aspect. For me, there are different friends to share different topics. One friend with topic X wouldn't have any clue about topic Y which I share with another friend. I talk, share about films, tv series, Bollywood etc with few friends immensely. They know how crazy I am. But there are other friends in office, with whom I share about work. They have no idea about my crazy part wrt films. There are few friends, who know my personal side and few friends have absolutely whatsoever, no idea about my personal life. School friends know different version of me while college friends recognize me in a different version. There are cousins, brother, sister who might have known me from long time, but even with them I project a different version of myself. With so much variations of my own version with several friends, how can I pick one friend, who is BEST. All I can do is to pick someone who overlaps with almost all of my versions, but other than myself there is no one.

After my SSLC, it was carved in my mind to not make any friends in college (long story, may be another blog) and I seem to think that, it could be the reason for my split versions of friendship probably. I am not sure, but certainly I cannot name any one person as my best friend, but the closest answer I can think of is, multiple friends of mine make my BEST FRIEND.

I know, best friends change through times (at school, college, etc) as we grow up but I have witnessed people coming up with one name (or 2, max 3 names) as soon as someone asks, who is your best friend. But for me, its not a single digit. I wonder, am i the only one like dyslexia in TZP or it is common with many people who doesn't have best friend.

As departing thoughts, I think, for married ones, by default and obviously, your better half (husband/wife) is the best friend. As they discuss almost everything under the sky, know about each other insanely well and for God's sake, they share their life together! In that sense, I am yet to meet my so called "Best Friend" ;)