Skip to main content

Friends


There’s something in me that resists making friends.  Except for a brief period of my youth, I kept away from people as much as possible.  That brief period itself was the cause.  Those whom I considered friends were mocking me at my back.  When I learnt that I chose solitude except at the professional level. 

If people found me funny enough to have hearty laughs at my cost, there must be something wrong with me.  That’s why I quit socialising.  So it’s not the others I’m blaming; it’s myself.  However, I’m not wallowing in self-pity.  It’s just that I learnt that I wasn’t meant for being with people.  So I chose books as my friends. 

But there are a few individuals whom I can call friends with whom I maintain meaningful contact.  As meaningful as the relationship between Piglet and Winnie the Pooh:
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.” 




Comments

  1. Sir, there is nothing wrong with you. Those people are truly great manipulators. That's just what they do. Only because​, they can't handle what's right about you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Failing to learn the ways of the world is the most serious failure.

      Delete
  2. I agree. I do feel like I am at loss and do want to be like others. But knowing that someone else is doing just fine being in his own skin gives me a relief.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Probably it's the same reason why I took a liking to you ☺

      Delete
  3. Your insight into the social aspects, knowledge level on the topics you discuss, control over the grammatical English, keen interest to bring out the oft sidelined issues and boldness in calling a spade a spade are clearly noticeable as one goes thru' your Posts.. All these qualities together are really rare in a Blogger!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm indeed glad to hear that, sir, especially from you. Thanks a lot.

      Delete
  4. Well, Sir, I'd like to differ with you. Making someone laugh is quite a difficult task. I always fail in doing so. In my opinion, you are a blessed one. Also, you didn't quit socialising because, as I see, you're using the medium of blogging to socialise with us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The virtual society is quite different from the real one. Thanks for letting me know that I belong there fairly well. And the laugh part - my fb profile describes me as 'The joker in the pack'. ☺

      Delete
  5. Very sweet story of Piglet and Pooh.

    ReplyDelete

  6. Your blogs reveal that your friends circle is quite large. It will expand further when you consider those who only read your blogs but seldom respond!

    ‘Friends’ ‘meaningful contact’ are ambiguous words. But I am sure you have a larger group of admirers and followers than you may be aware of or wish to admit

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really didn't mean the friends in social networks or readers of my blogs. Still glad this post elicited a comment from you.

      Delete
  7. I feel sorry for those people who failed to see the gem in you. Friend or no friend, I really admire you always :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Amit. Maybe I wasn't a very likeable person as a young man. Youth and folly go hand in hand as they say. :)

      Delete
  8. All are strangers until you meet them. All are friends until you know them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...