Why everyone needs an Indian friend

Do some cultures foster better relationships than others?

An article in The Atlantic on the nature of friendship in the western world got me thinking. In a rare quantitative analysis of the nature of friendships, it concluded that an average American has 16 people they call friends of which three are friends for life and five are people they really like. The rest (eight) are people they have transactional relationships with. These were people who could provide help in career advancement or be helpful because they lived in the neighbourhood. It goes on to differentiate between ‘real’ friends and ‘deal’ friends and concludes that ‘deal’ friends are expedient relationships and are therefore not the source of joy or satisfaction through life. Sure, so what’s new? We know a borrowed cup of sugar is useful but will it sweeten the long journey of life — heck, no!

So, what makes Indians different? My theory is that we have far more real friends — some more loosely aligned through life than others — and they bring us a lot more lasting joy, satisfaction and comfort. The first is the purely pragmatic aspect — a large network leads to more opportunities in a society built on hierarchy and closed off to free and fair competition. Jobs, marriages and these days sadly, even medicines and hospital beds are procured through a large network of friends. And while these friends are certainly useful and expedient and therefore fit The Atlantic’s definition of ‘deal’ friends, they are actually much more than that.

These are relationships that are lovingly invested in for many decades through school and college and beyond. Some start off as colleagues in a first job, others as the children of our parents’ friends, yet others as our children’s friends’ parents. Yet once they become real friends, their value is intrinsic in themselves — not in what they can get us. Sure, they can theoretically get us a lot of favours. I can count a high court judge, several ambassadors, India’s leading lawyer, a self-made tech billionaire, an award-winning author and a serving minister amongst friends I have acquired through one of the categories mentioned above.

Being highly intelligent and interesting people, they have brought colour and richness to my life wherever I have lived. Through the years and with increasing global interconnectedness, their emails, their whatsapp messages, and even their social media accounts have been the source of pleasure and pride. I have seen their children grow up and get married. I have attended some of the weddings or seen photos on Facebook if I have not. I have blessed the children and felt blessed that I could share the family’s joy. It has been a journey of parallel lives.

However, the story would not be complete without other friends I have had and held onto for decades, who are totally different from me. They have lived unconventional lives, on their own terms. And I have no hesitation in saying they have given me equal joy. Just seeing life from another perspective is so rewarding. I met one such friend from my first job a few weeks ago. We were meeting after 36 years, he had reminded me on the phone. ‘Do you have decent internet’ were my first words to him. ‘You have become fat’ were his to me and then with one Covid-defying hug we resumed our interrupted relationship with affection, mutual respect and lots of joy.

While my daughter carried on with her business zoom calls to London on his excellent Wifi, David and I had tea and caught up on three decades of life. The informality, the right even, with which I could walk into his home, after such a long time and no contact, was not accidental. The seeds had been sown long ago when we used to meet almost every evening after work and had once spent the night stuck in a ferris wheel that broke down — staring at the night sky and thinking about the future.

What makes Indians treasure our friendships more than the Americans sampled in The Atlantic? I believe it is our multi-nodal view of ourselves. We Indians see ourselves at the centre of a constantly orbiting set of relationships that jostle for attention. We are mami ( mother’s brother’s wife) to one set of children, chachi ( father’s brother’s wife) to another set. We are daughters and sons but also nieces and nephews. We are also parents (for life, no matter how old the children are) but also grandchildren in a long, unbroken family line. We see ourselves as part of the jungle gym of criss-crossing relationships that make up Indian family life. And friends are family we choose to have. They are awarded the same privileges and more. The ultimate compliment given to a friend is ‘he/she is like family to us’. Again, a commonly used phrase, but it reveals a lot about us as a people. We give unconditional love and support to our friends, just as we do to our families, and put them at the centre of our lives.

And while Indian mythology is replete with tales of sibling rivalry and internecine war such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana — friendship is almost always deified and eulogised. Whether it is the mythical Sudama-Krishna friendship, or a Bollywood ‘dosti’ it is founded in love and meant to last forever. It has no purpose or goal except that of caring for the friend.

Contrast this world view with that of a western person as described by The Atlantic. The centre of the western person’s life is the unit they build with their romantic partner. All other relationships, including parents and children are meant to wither away during the course of life. Parents recede in importance as they grow older, children become less pivotal as they leave the nest. Cousins are complete strangers and uncles and aunts come once a year — at Christmas or Thanksgiving. What chance do friends have in this scheme of things? A romantic pairing at the centre of the world leaves little room for any other kind of rewarding relationship. Yes, there are social ‘other couple’ friends but the talk is of vacations and golf. Skimming the surface rather than diving deep into what they really think or feel.

However, friendship has been shown to impact happiness time and again and accounts for almost 60 per cent of the difference in happiness amongst people. Little wonder then that the Atlantic article seeks to help people feeling dissatisfied with their friendships with a to-do list:

“Make a list of the people in your life with whom you feel comfortable discussing personal details”

While most Americans surveyed struggled to come up with a few names, most Indians would struggle to limit the number. We are an open and emotional lot after all!

“The American men surveyed seem to base their relationships around shared interests or work while the women base their friendships on emotional and social support and the women’s model was considered more satisfying in the long run.”

In the case of Indians, both men and women seek and give emotional support to friends. Male friendships are often strong in the Indian context in fact, as men have traditionally had more financial muscle and more independence with regard to actions. I have several friends whose husbands take golfing holidays or trekking trips with their male buddies without taking their wives along. The Indian sisterhood is catching on slowly as Indian girls earn and exert themselves.

The article encourages people to make friends through turning up at places like churches or charities — in other words, relationships founded on giving rather than receiving.

I am not suggesting we Indians are perfect but we do have an innate understanding of investing in relationships. So, when we hum along to the immortal Sholay song ‘yeh dosti hum nahin todenge’ we are not seeing Dharmendra and Amitabh on a rickety motorcycle with a sidecar, we are remembering our own youthful, windswept faces as we had fun with friends and swore undying loyalty to each other. And in our own way, without any accompanying Bollywood drama, we have mostly kept our promises!

This article was published in the Indian daily The Statesman and on Medium earlier.