Skip to main content

Friend, Unfriend




My FaceBook account is accessible only to my friends.  At least, that’s how I intended it and fixed the settings.  The reason is that I want only those people who know me to read what I write in that social media which is not as civilised a place as the blogosphere.  Moreover, I make a lot of political statements there and many people may not like such statements, especially those who are known as bhakts these days. 

The other day I made a comment on a link posted in FB by a blogger friend.  I used to avoid her ever since I discovered that she and I were poles apart in our attitudes to the current politics in the country.  But something provoked me to make a comment.  She reacted saying that she does not appreciate such comments and I should not use her space for writing such things.  I unfriended her immediately.  When there arise conditions and restrictions on what you can express, it is no more friendship.  I don’t make rude or vulgar comments anyway.  

But the next day the grand lady sent me a fairly long apology via messenger and sent me a friend request.  I told her the apology was out of place.  If we are poles apart in our attitudes and views, we should keep apart from each other.  But I accepted the friendship particularly because she said that we should accept divergent opinions.  Within moments of my accepting her friendship offer, she unfriended me. 

I laughed like a mad man when I saw what she did.  What was she trying to prove?  That it was her prerogative to befriend or unfriend, not mine?  

There is a kind of fraudulence in the attitude of such people.  They are not what they pretend to be.  They preach big morals in their writings and pretend to be profound philosophers.  I am blunt when it comes to calling a spade a spade.  But only when it is a spade.  I don’t pretend. 

The people whom I keep as far away from me as possible are pretenders.  I don’t mind if I have only a handful of friends.  It is better to have a few genuine people around than a thousand frauds.

Inspired by Indispire Edition 184: #Friend2Stranger


Comments

  1. This is such weird behavior. To request you to accept the friend request and then unfriend. I just abhor such pretenders.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Honestly I don't know why she did it. I had !much respect for her in spite of our political differences. Now I hold her in utter contempt.

      Delete
  2. Probably this is what called "ego problem".
    When you are writing specially on politics then you should have the mindset to accept different opinions but reacting like this is ridiculous...did her like her attitude.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We can disagree with others in mature and acceptable ways. In fact, I have an FB friend who is a staunch BJP loyalist and who questions me. But we get along well respecting each other's views in spite of our differences.

      Delete
  3. I have not been able to follow your posts of late. I hate myself for getting tangled in a new place with new people. Perhaps curiosity had a better of me. Few friends, you talked about. I don't know how to even have those few friends. How would I know for sure whether they are worthy of my friendship? So I thought of making some interactions with them. No. They disappointed me.

    They want to have the last word, last act, last blow. So, is it better to keep on searching for genuine friends when the pretentious ones try every chance to throw the final blow irrespective of opinions and views?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People have become so opinionated that it's impossible to get 'genuine' friends. I guess we have to manage with what's available. But this lady's behaviour went beyond all my expectations and experiences.

      Delete
  4. Quantity of friends doesn't matter, quality does.

    Strangely I have faced a similar 'follow & then unfollow' situation on Twitter!
    An 'influencer' & Blogger got into an ugly public conversation with me on Twitter. Then she begged for forgiveness & followed me on Twitter & after I had done the same, unfollowed me!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some people are so egoistic that they can beg like that Ram Rahim fellow and then try terrorist strategies to save their bums!

      Delete
  5. That was a very childish behaviour of the lady ! Or she wanted to have the last laugh ? But in any case you are fortunate that you are no longer 'friends'...👍

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is good occurence. You don´t need such false friends in your circle anyway. True friends will accept you the way you are...differences in opinions and even lifestyles...they are non-judgemental. Unfortunately, the world is full of such two faced people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had not expected this from this particular lady, however. That makes it all the worse. But such people are more in number these days.

      Delete

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

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...

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...