Few days ago ‘Friendship Day’ was celebrated. Everyone was wishing each other by sending some sentimental messages about friendship. Entire social media was filled with these messages. When I was going through these messages, I felt as if there is a competition about sending more sentimental, more nostalgic messages than other person. How many of us really mean what we say in a message? Do we all have the same definition of friend?

Now a days, I see people boosting about having hundreds of friends online but in reality they hardly meet anyone. Then where are all these friends? They are in virtual world. I am not going to talk about social media and its pros and cons. I feel that everything in this virtual world is superficial. There is no warmth when we ask each other ‘How are you?’ When we say each other ‘Take care’, do we really mean it or just another sentence of formality? This does not apply only to friends but to any kind of relation.

Because of social media we are calling even acquaintances as friends. But in reality we are going away from real life friends. We say I don’t have time to spend with friends but we do have time to talk to them in virtual world. When we meet our friends personally, we don’t know what to talk but when we go home we chat with them for hours together. Does this mean that we are losing our social skills and learned to live in the virtual world? Anyways, I still admire an minute phone call from a friend or a 10 minute visit, than a page long message sent to me over social media.

During my recent visit to India, I met friends from my law college days after almost 15 years. We hardly speak on any social media like WhatsApp or Facebook but when we met it was like we just met yesterday. We had so much to talk about that we forgot whether we placed our order or not. These are the people whom I call friend.

Whenever I express these thoughts to any of my friends, everyone agrees that spending time with friends is the best therapy. Nothing can refresh you more than meeting friends, spending time with them. You don’t need to go to 5Star hotels to spend time with them, you can do it over just a cup of tea at any small tea joint.

Ahh..!!! Miss you friends for all the crazy things which we did. Thank God we did those things, we at least now have a memory to laugh at.

Happy Friendship Day!!