Power of Friendship

World is going to celebrate friendship day in a week's time. I don't have admiration for reserving a day of the year for each relation ie., dad's day, mom's day, lover's day, son's day etc., But it does not really hurt me to write a small note abt power of friendship.

Friendship is one relation that gives an individual, to some extent, an opportunity to choose. We cannot choose our parents, we cant do so with our siblings. We just need to accept them as is. But in life we get opportunity to choose the friend we want. In my opening sentence I said 'to some extent'. Reason is even though it would appear to us we have ocean of opportunity with us to choose any as our friend, but a closer look reveals that we can only choose from the list of people we come across in life. One cannot choose to be friends with a sachin tendulkar or a ameer khan, if life does not provide him/her with an opportunity to meet them at all. Secondly, we want to be friend with a person but the relation only works when the other person also accepts the friendship. Thirdly, our samskaras do not allow us to make friends with some people even if we try to.

There goes an old saying that says 'show me your friends, I will tell who you are'. It means as one has choice on friendship, one would choose people who are similar to himself or herself, or one with whom one feel secure, or one who emancipates what one aspires to be. It does not necessarily means personalities match exactly but underlying fundamentals match. My feeling is that all my friends have whole lot of differences when it comes to personalities but what unifies us together is the commonality in the moral code.

Like none of my notes are complete with out reference to Ramayana or other epics. I will try to illustrate few friendships in our epics and how they made their impact to person's life. To begin with Ramayana, two brothers named Vali and Sugriva were there. Vali had a friend named Ravana and Sugriva had a friend named Rama. Sugriva prospered because of friendship to a good person and went on to become king of vanaras and Vali got killed by Rama. If we closely inspect, why Rama made friendship with Sugriva instead of Vali. Sugriva and Rama were in similar state when they met, Rama's wife stolen by Ravana and Sugriva's wife stolen by Vali. Further more inspection gives that Sugriva is a dharmic individual like Rama and so they were able to strike an accord.

In Mahabharata again were two brothers names Karna and Arjuna. Arjuna is close friend of Lord Krishna where as Karna made friendship with jealous Duryodhana. Karna's noble qualities faded by the company bad guys and thus had to meet death in the hands of Arjuna. Where as Arjuna prospered under friendship of Krishna. He gave timely advises like getting pasupata Astra from Krishna. It is Lord Krishna who motivates Arjuna before Kurukshetra war by teaching him Bhagavadgita.

Even in our life we would have noted we come across many friends at several points of time and not all of them stay for long. Not all of them make an impact as well. Good friends make a positive impact that we would carry althrough our life. Bad friends too make an impact albeit a killer impact that can nearly ruin the life.

To conclude, I am one such lucky individual to come across some nice people in my life who made deep impact to my life at different points of time. In gratitude I am sending this note to those wonderful people.