Skip to main content

Friendship

Image from disneyclips


Philosopher Nietzsche was of the opinion that what makes unhappy marriages is lack of friendship rather than lack of love. As a man who has celebrated the silver jubilee of his wedding, I raise my hat in deference to the philosopher. What has sustained my married life is the friendship that has existed between the two of us. Even the other day, someone asked Maggie whether ours was a love marriage. We give that impression, the inquirer explained. We have faced this question umpteen times by now. Even my students raise that question when they get an opportunity.

When husband and wife see themselves as friends, the demands made by traditional roles of husband and wife vanish. I don’t have to be the domineering man of the house in a traditional Indian family and Maggie doesn’t have to be India’s ideal submissive wife. We are rather like Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet.

Piglet sidles up from behind calling, ‘Pooh!’

‘Yes, Piglet!’

‘Nothing.’ Piglet takes Pooh’s paw and says, ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.’ Sure of the abiding presence.

There is nothing holier in a relationship than that certainty.

What sustains a good friendship is not counsels, not solutions to problems, not financial help in times of need, not ideological support, but the abiding presence. Very few people will let you take their hand in yours when you are down and out.

I remember my bad days in Shillong. The going was tough. My morale had hit the rock bottom. I walked with a bent head because I had no courage to look on people’s faces. I longed to have someone whom I could cosy up to and feel sure of his abiding presence with me. You realise how good your so-called friends are when you are at the rock-bottom.

The one who can absorb your worst vulnerabilities is your friend. That person absorbs your errors and fallibilities. And the occasional, inevitable hurts too. There is no friendship without hurts. But you know that your friend is worth suffering for.

Piglet: How do you spell love?

Pooh: You don’t spell it; you feel it.

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

Yesterday’s: Euthanasia

Tomorrow: Gandhi in Delhi on Good Friday

Labels:

Comments

  1. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuApril 6, 2023 at 8:12 AM

    Wishing you a belated marriage anniversary 💐 and lot many years of blissful togetherness ahead ! This was such a beautiful treat. Only the lucky ones get to experience this. And you are certainly one of them, Sir !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 9:08 AM

      Thank you, Chinmayee. Yes, I am blessed in this regard - having the most loyal friend for wife.

      Delete
  2. DeepikaApril 6, 2023 at 8:17 AM

    The one who can absorb your worst vulnerabilities is your friend.
    Such a beautiful line.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 9:08 AM

      I have experienced all kinds of friendships, Deepika. This too.

      Delete
  3. Anupama JoshyApril 6, 2023 at 8:57 AM

    Love blossoms from a good friendship.

    ReplyDelete
  4. CareenaApril 6, 2023 at 10:57 AM

    This post made me emotional. Im learning so much good from these posts. Thank you for these.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 6, 2023 at 12:07 PM

    That's a lovely post, Tomichan. Long after passion and beauty die, it's friendship that keeps a relationship alive.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rajeev MoothedathApril 6, 2023 at 12:39 PM

    A lovely post. Best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Prasanna RaghavanApril 6, 2023 at 2:29 PM

    Yeah, you stated it rendering your own life as an example, and so lovely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 2:35 PM

      My wife has been my best friend for all the years of our life together.

      Delete
  8. Tina TojoApril 6, 2023 at 2:46 PM

    My most lovely pair....Pooh and the Piglet....your version made me to love them even more...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 2:54 PM

      And I'm so ecstatic to receive your comment, ma'am.

      Delete
  9. Joshua josephApril 6, 2023 at 4:28 PM

    When they stick by you…. Because of you, your nature, your support…your presence and you to them due to their presence…it works out at the end. Many leave it mid way due to selfishness and lack of understanding and communications….but if ur ready to fight for the friendship it will last

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 5:10 PM

      There's some greatness that's just screaming to come out of you, dear Joshua. Let it out. But don't fight for it.

      Delete
  10. Yamini MacLeanApril 6, 2023 at 4:41 PM

    Hari OM
    ❤🧡💛💚🩵💙💜 YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  11. Mysticaanjali April 6, 2023 at 4:44 PM

    💞💞🥰

    ReplyDelete
  12. Harshita NandaApril 6, 2023 at 5:02 PM

    Oh what a beautiful post Sir...Dare I say, almost like a love letter to your wife. P.s. I also do subcribe to the view that friendship matters a lot in a marriage

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2023 at 5:08 PM

      My wife hardly reads my posts, I think. She doesn't tell me anything, at least. :)

      Delete
  13. magiceyeApril 6, 2023 at 7:04 PM

    So true!

    ReplyDelete
  14. ArtiApril 6, 2023 at 8:55 PM

    Loved this post. Pooh and Piglet are the best philosophers of our times. I'm all smiles. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  15. marietta pereiraApril 6, 2023 at 9:50 PM

    True friends are those who hang in there with you in fair and stormy weather.

    ReplyDelete
  16. SuchitaApril 6, 2023 at 9:56 PM

    Abiding presence - love this phrase. This was such a sweet post. It reminded me of my 5 friends :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. deepti menonApril 10, 2023 at 11:12 PM

    What a beautiful post... I love the reference to Pooh and Piglet! May God bless you both! I agree that friendship is the most important quality in a marriage.

    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
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af
9 comments
Read more