Friends
Back to Ahmedabad after hectic trip of Rajasthan. It is always fun to visit the native place and interact with relatives. More fun if it is some function like marriage. The memories of childhood, family relatives, old friends all give exciting feelings. I met one of my college friend after 28 years.
When we meet some one after gap of 20-30 years, we notice lot of change in face and body structure, voice and maturity but still there is some thing intact (intimacy) which keeps the relationship alive. When analysing the past, we arrive at the conclusion that despite the best efforts in life, we all are at the same level from where we moved on. What has changed is some economic status, some addition in family, grown kids, some specs, either baldness or grey hairs. Life moves on with all these addition deletions.
One particular thing I noticed in my native is that people there are too much surrounded by the relatives. This does not leave any space for friends and hence the parameters of status of a family are decided by the number of relatives. In present world relatives are scattered. In many cases I noticed the infighting between relatives over money, properties or ego clashes.They don't talk to each other or very friendly but the social fabric is so strong/thick that people don't look beyond the relatives. In the process they can not build strong relationship through friendship and hence end up with very slow progress. I believe the relationship created, or rather gifted, by being in social relations are mostly pulled on by compulsions and not of choice. such relations always give heart burn and create distances. Where as a person can build better and stronger relationship out side the blood/social relations. A good and supporting person may be distant relative socially but he may be close friend. In society such persons are always considered as distant relative with long distance. On other side a close relative may be of no value practically but just because he is in close relation, he gets due credit.
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