BackThe unbeatable love and hate of old friends
The best part about old friends is their ability to overcome and overlook your flaws
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I was so excited when Babyjaan met her first bestie at the age of 3. Three years on, they’re enrolled in different schools, but I have a feeling that, one day, in the words of singer-songwriter Paul Simon, they’ll be old friends sitting on their park bench like bookends.
They’ll cackle and recall their cantonment teenager days riding a Royal Enfield Classic 500, silencer removed, the air around them thrumming with that testosterone-filled Yeh Dosti vibe.
Of course, Simon’s relationship with his old friend Art Garfunkel, which began in class VI and resulted in a partnership that won 11 Grammy awards, ended badly. They recorded their first song at 16 but split at their professional peak, shortly after their biggest-selling album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. They’ve come together often after that break-up but it’s never been the same. On the live recording of Old Friends: Live On Stage, a reunion concert held in 2003, there’s this bittersweet exchange that only old friends who’ve loved and hated each other can appreciate properly:
Garfunkel: They cast the two of us in the elementary school graduation play Alice In Wonderland and I was the Cheshire Cat, and it’s been a lot of laughs ever since. With a few interruptions, this would be the 50th anniversary of this friendship that I deeply cherish.
Simon: We met when we were 11 years old in Alice In Wonderland and I was the White Rabbit—it’s a leading role—and Artie was the Cheshire Cat—it was a supporting role...a very important supporting role. Now, we started to sing together when we were 13 years old, and we started to argue when we were 14 years old. So that makes this the 47th anniversary of our arguing.
Old friends are like that worn T-shirt that’s become a second skin now—the one your spouse sometimes wonders why you’re still wearing. They are a repository of your growing up memories, a dependable backup of your hard drive that will not be easily lost. That day you, a cocky pre-teen, sat on the edge of the 22nd floor parapet, posing for a picture (that your mother later saw, alas), is etched as clearly in their mind as it is in yours.
Staying up late on an overnight train ride counting the cockroaches and exchanging dark secrets, falling in and out of love (sometimes with the same person), not leaving you alone when you lost a parent, getting drunk, being introduced to Ozzy Osbourne, hitching a ride, casually stalking a crush, joining a Gorkhaland march while on a trek in Darjeeling, cookouts in an oversized handi because back then nobody worried they were eating too much—your old friends are standing right beside you in all the early snapshots of your life.
The best kind of old friends are those who have exchanged letters (not to be confused with texts, WhatsApp messages or Facebook updates) along the journey. When I was homesick as a graduate student in the US, old friends took turns to write to me, ensuring I received a letter every single day for the first few months.
But the best part about old friends is their ability, cultivated over a lifetime of knowing you, to overcome and overlook your flaws. “Old friends allow me the comfort of being myself. There are very few places in life where you can be yourself, most places there is a certain amount of performance involved in what you do," says one of my philosophical friends. Another pal says old friends are those to whom she can vomit out her thoughts, no matter how ugly they seem inside her head. “You know they won’t judge you," she adds.
These days though, in a world that’s become increasingly polarized, many of us judge our old friends for their political views. It’s often easier to exit than to engage. What’s the point of arguing with someone who may have gone to all the same liberal educational institutions as you but whose views diverged sharply along the way, right? But losing an old friend is like giving up a part of yourself, so some of us do a precarious balancing act, hoping that we’ll touch common ground one day.
Old friends are great when you need someone to stand up and talk about you. Actor and comic Billy Crystal gave a funny, lovely eulogy about his 42-year friendship with Muhammad Ali at the boxer’s funeral. Their unlikely friendship began when Crystal got a chance to impersonate Ali in front of him. After he was done, Ali gave him a bear hug and whispered, “You’re my little brother". From then on, he always called Crystal that.
“Ali forced us to take a look at ourselves. This brash young man who thrilled us, angered us, confused and challenged us, ultimately became a silent messenger of peace, who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls," Crystal said at the funeral. Old friends can be counted upon to say good things about you when you’re gone.
I met my oldest old friend when I was nine years old and we were both selected to be on the school’s athletics team. We were polar opposites (neat vs messy; language vs math; proper vs most inappropriate). The days the phone didn’t ring repeatedly my mother would ask: Fought again? But that was childhood. After a deep trough that lasted a few years, we’ve recently been clawing our way back into each other’s lives again, helped in no small part by our daughters, born three days apart.
On WhatsApp, that scary place that can immediately recreate the dynamics of a group of old friends exactly the way they left it on that battered stone bench behind the college canteen 25 years ago, I gathered the courage (because who knows what she might say) to ask my oldest friend to share some thoughts about old friendships. She messaged back several one-liners which I’ve reproduced without tinkering.
How you hate and love them.
No walls.
Knowing the essence.
Knowing the buttons.
No need to explain anything.
Trust.
No need to read deep into anything.
And then, just as I was relaxing, her killer conclusion: Old friends can love each other yet grow apart. Have deep loyalty but not know what the fuck to say to each other any more.
Old friends can always be counted on to be honest—even when you don’t want them to be.
Priya Ramani shares what’s making her feel angsty/agreeable every fortnight. She tweets at @priyaramani and posts on Instagram as babyjaanramani.
Write to Priya at crankycustomer@livemint.com
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