Net –> Normal Friends – Journey Abridged

Posted on | June 5, 2008 | No Comments

Friends – everybody’s life line I guess. At least for me, they have been, they are and will continue to be. Of all the relations known to me, friendship is one that I have always cherished and relished. May be even more than the relationship with my immediate family members. Relatives – I never gave a damn ever….I still don’t and don’t foresee such gesture from my side in the near future. In the past 24 years of my life, I met innumerous people. Although, I have never been a part of big gang – credit goes to my reserve nature (read skeptical and choosy), but I always had the best of friends. I believe in quality and not quantity!

Though the number of friends (read quality friends) has increased in these 24 years, especially after I came to Delhi. The city took its due toll on me too J I have improved in communication since my school time and sometimes initiate a conversation myself now. And, this art has earned me quiet a lot of friends – some very good ones. I met these friends at strange places, but, what mattered to me was the person and persona. I met them in school, in my colony, coaching classes, buses (while traveling from my home town to Delhi), my first workplace, at the third one, at the present one, and few in the office rest rooms J (read gals’ favorite gossip room). And yes! not to forget the Web. From the time I entered the Internet-famo, I have met amazing characters – from fools to geniuses, from womanizers to woman haters, from dull to full of life and vigor, from the ones that I had to run away from to the ones I ran after. Another, pot in the garden was Orkut – the biggest networking site. I grew my network too. Made new friends, some very good ones, so much that they are important part of my life now, chatted for hours with them on phone, even met a few. I even had a crush on one and so was sharing feelings with one of my sweetest cousins. Despite the kind of person I am (read choosy and suspicious) in choosing my friends, I was asked a dumfounding question. How can you trust people over the net? How can you exchange numbers with them? And, leave this all, how can you go and meet them? Have you gone crazy? How can you take the risk of trusting those people? Risk!!!!!!!!! I had no answer to this! I was perplexed. I gave some silly yet satisfying answer and closed the matter at that time. But, this question kept on hunting me. Since that day I get more skeptical talking to my friends – net friends as per the nomenclature. On the contrary, the sounds from my soft heart keep on hounding too. Friends are friends after all! Does the place I met them really matters?

Her concern was okay too. Even media is raising questions on networking sites and network so formed, especially after cases of Adnan Patrawala and likes. There have been long threads on Orkut and various other sites discussing if such sites should be banned. But, my question is – How would that ban the human tendency to interact with people and making friends. Can you ban human mind and its thinking capability? It is a wanderer and flies even past the horizons of imagination. It is like making two people sit in the same room and asking them not to interact. And, how does it matter if I meet a friend in a train or on Orkut. I would still get to know only the things that person would let me know. In neither case, I can extract more information than I am been exposed too. I cannot spy on every creature on this motherly earth.

People are people after all, be it on Orkut or on a journey to some strange city with me. The people I met on first day of my class were equal strangers to me as the people I met on the Internet. Is it then really justified to differentiate friends as normal friends and net friends? In so many cases my communication with school and college friends (read normal friends) is now limited to messengers. Is it okay to say that they have now turned into Net friends and so I should doubt their integrity and honesty? It totally depends on a person and his/her capability to judge people. The risk of meeting Judas in your life will always be there. The place where you meet that person hardly matters in that case. I have seen people getting into successful business ventures through Internet. Have they not taken the risk, they would have missed a great opportunity. On the contrary, people ditch their close relatives in case of business. Can you keep a check on their honesty and integrity? No! not at all. So, continue interacting with strangers and make new friends! Live up the journey of net friends to friends!

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