Friendships are unnecessary

I've been thinking a lot about friendships recently.

Growing up, my parents often posed big questions to my sister and me. "What values are important to you?" I vividly recall my mother asking me this during my summer holidays in class seven. I remember answering "loyalty".

Maybe growing up in an all-girls boarding school influenced my response. We grew up fiercely loyal to each other. We cherished our friendships and sisterhood, and our friends became our chosen family. Snitching on a peer was frowned upon and would almost certainly lead to ostracisation by batchmates. Many did not care and still did it to please a teacher and get an official position as a reward, or something similar.

I could never.

I remember being put in the most difficult position of my sixteen-year-old life when my school principal threatened to suspend me for a month if I did not divulge the names of the girls who used my very illegal phone. I refused, and chose to receive the scarlet letter instead. It never occurred to me for a second that I could give up the names of my friends. I would've rather gotten suspended and faced my parents' wrath instead of betraying my friends.

When we started college, my school friends and I ended up in North Campus of Delhi University and I mostly turned to them for companionship. Anytime there was a break, we were together. The familiarity of old friends helped me navigate this alien, big world. Over time, I realised I needed to make friends outside my little bubble. I began spending more time with my classmates and tried to find my people. By the second semester, the usual large groups that formed early on naturally downsized, leaving a few of us with proximity, and time to foster a solid connection.

I started my first job immediately after graduating college, and it was exhilarating, a whole new world. There was a closeness unlike anything I could have imagined from any other job — a magical mix of the excitement of hosting the first FIFA tournament in India, and a work culture that allowed everyone to express themselves freely.

Between work, a long-distance relationship, living independently, and spending time with new friends, life felt both full and exciting. Looking back, I realised that it was my school friendships that were pushed to the periphery. While a few friends from school stayed close, I almost consciously let most of my other childhood friendships cool. Maybe I was overwhelmed, or perhaps I was seeking experiences beyond my boarding school bubble. As Weike Wang so beautifully writes in her essay in the New Yorker that ""cooled” does not necessarily mean “severed”". I too, owed myself and my friends "the chance, at some future point, to fortify the bond again".

That chance came at our 10th-year-reunion in October 2023. Around 30 of us (almost half our batch) gathered at school, and it was as if no time had passed. I like to imagine almost everyone present felt this way and shared this bond. There was so much to reminisce. We grew up getting in trouble together, bunking morning PT, climbing on the auditorium roof, singing in the class (and later being punished to sing 'Bole Chudiyan' on stage in assembly).

Since then, I've felt an overwhelming love for my school friends. These friendships are still comfortable, fun, and effortless. They always pass what Tim Urban calls the "traffic test", where you enjoy each other's company so much that being stuck in a traffic jam together makes you wish for more traffic. I have been thinking more about this and the importance of fun in a friendship. I think we don't celebrate it enough.

Perhaps this is what CS Lewis understood so deeply: that friendship is 'unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.'

After joining a boarding school, within one year, I knew that friendship was going to be an integral part of my life. Loyalty carries even greater weight when it is done in a voluntary relationship, not because of blood or circumstance. The fact that people close to me shared this value wasn't a coincidence.

Which makes it all the more surprising just how deeply the fracture of a long-standing friendship shocked me. I kept wondering how a relationship could break down after almost a decade of closeness. It took me nearly a year of reflection to understand that it perhaps stemmed from something more profound: a fundamental difference in how we valued the essence of friendship itself.

Friendship, I've learnt, isn't necessarily about proximity, as I once thought it could be, but about shared history, genuine care, a willingness to show up for each other, loyalty, and laughter. Lots of laughter.